- In tonight's closer look, scrambling to find summer help.
A shortage of foreign worker visas leaves Wisconsin tourist
attractions coming up short when it comes to finding seasonal
employees.
For more on this, we are joined by the CEO of
the Wisconsin Hotel and Lodging Association, Trish Pugal.
She joins us by phone.
Trisha, thanks a lot for doing so.
- My pleasure.
- Well, so describe what the situation is for seasonal
employers trying to find enough help this summer.
- Well, I think the challenges are just being able to fill all
the positions and the shifts, competing with other industries
who are also facing shortages and hiring challenges.
- So which sector is hardest hit?
- Within the lodging industry, the service positions seem to be
primarily due to vacancies.
But it really also has an impact on management because they are
responsible for finding the solutions,
filling the roles and many times jumping into pinch hit.
- So how bad is it?
I mean, how would the customer see this shortage?
- Hopefully it would be seamless and they would not see
anything.
The whole role of management is to try to, again,
solve the issues of shortages and make sure that the delivery
of an excellent experience is still right on target.
- So what kind of economic impact does this have?
- Well, it's really pretty early to tell for this summer
because, again, hopefully the different lodging property
owners and managers are trying to find their solutions and
making the experience great and it hopefully will not show up
with a dramatic economic impact.
- Why is this happening?
- I think it's a combination of things,
everything from the unemployment being very low for all
positions.
We seem to also see less students that are looking for
summer employment or that are looking for limited hours or
short seasons, et cetera, which has an impact.
There is some areas that have a population density issue,
where they just don't have the population base
to be able to serve all the tourists coming in.
You've got the job hopping.
And you've got the fact that tourism
is pretty strong right now.
- Now, I understand that Homeland Security will offer
extra visas above the 66,000 nationwide cap that they have,
but not until possibly late July.
How much will that help?
- Well, unfortunately,
it wouldn't do much for this season.
However, it's an excellent, positive step
that they are considering how that could help in the future.
So it perhaps would be mostly for next year.
And that is the H-2B visas, which are just one of the visas
that are considered.
- So are some employers making use of other kinds of visas
to fill their needs?
- In our industry, definitely.
The J-1 visas, which are more of a cultural exchange program,
where there is some educational components involved.
That's strongly used in some of the areas with the populations,
the cities I had mentioned before, such as the Dells,
Door County, et cetera, where, again,
the residential base doesn't support all the positions
that are needing to be filled.
- Now, your organization I understand
has set up a task force to deal with this problem.
What will that task force look at in terms of solutions?
- Well, what we're trying to do is, for one thing,
to make sure that individuals are aware that our industry
is quite what you could call a ladder industry,
where you can climb up the career ladder pretty quickly and
the opportunities are strong, whether it's unique hours
to work, whether it's having different talents and changing,
moving your way up the ladder.
There's so many opportunities, and so we're kind of hoping
to be able to get the word out about that.
We're also going to create a guide for the existing resources
on both recruitment and retention
and try and come up with some creative ideas.
And we're going to be looking
at linkage with educational institutions as well.
It's a broad -- a lot of goals, and we're just getting started.
- Now, some might wonder if employers could attract these
workers with higher pay or perks.
- Well, I think what you'd find in our industry
is that wages are already rising.
It's basic, the laws of supply and demand for economics.
And it is something that's already happening,
and will continue based on the supply and demand.
And as far as performance as well.
Also, we do end up being a little creative sometimes
with perks that are offered, depending on the type
of property it is, whether it's some meals that are included
or flexible hours.
There are a lot of different options that are tapped,
depending on, again, the size of the property,
the type of the property, where it's located, et cetera.
- Okay. Well, good luck with this,
even as this season unfolds this summer.
Trish Pugal, thanks very much.
- Thank you.