Nehemiah Manufacturing Screens Workers with a Criminal Past to Offer Them a Second Chance Nehemiah Manufacturing Co. is a household and personal care products company that has been . The company makes and packages several lines for Procter & Gamble (P&G) such as Downey, Draft, and Febreze, and has annual revenues of over $50 million. Since it first opened, Nehemiah has practiced what they term second-chance hiring of difficult-to-employ, formerly incarcerated people. The company has a workforce of 150 people, and about 83 percent have a criminal record. An outstanding example is Michael Taylor, now the operations manager at Nehemiah. He has been promoted seven times in five years. Before the company gave him a second chance, Taylor could not land a job anywhere. "Employers would run a background check on me, and back out," he said. When two managers with extensive consumer-products experience founded Nehemiah, their idea was to create more job opportunities in a struggling part of Cincinnati. Often job creation meant recruiting and hiring a sub-set of the population with difficulty finding employment, those with criminal backgrounds. The program of hiring workers with a criminal past, centers on providing social services and support to workers returning from incarceration out of necessity, because the program got off to a rocky start. Many employees continued.

to struggle with substance abuse or mental ill-ness, and some were homeless. "We didn't un-derstand all of the challenges," said Dan Meyer, CEO of Nehemiah. Employees showed up one day only to disappear the following day. To help deal with these problems, Nehemiah employs a social worker fulltime along with a three-person support team. The company also partners with several social service agencies in the Cincinnati area, such as The HELP Program. The social worker team meets with each re-cruit to conduct a complete assessment of the worker's immediate barriers to employment. Among the factors evaluated are housing stabil-ity, available transportation, drug and alcohol problems, mental health issues, and outstanding fees. Next, a plan is developed to remove the bar-riers that have in the past kept that person from holding a job. "We are investing in our employ-ees in order to retain them," said Richard Palmer, president of Nehemiah. Employees are offered temporary jobs first, and start employment on the factory floor taking products off the conveyor belt and loading them onto a pallet. Nehemiah management quickly saw the need for being more deliberate about iden-tifying candidates who are likely to be good, reliable employees. Even the candidates who appear to be the strongest still need extensive social support. During the first nine years of operation, 170 employees had passed through their sec-ond-chance program. The turnover rate has been a low 15 percent, a fact that contributes to company productivity. Nehemiah leadership contends that their difficult-to-employ workers appreciate their second chance and often be-come extremely loyal "super-workers." Palmer said that "We found out that the population we're hiring who had criminal backgrounds were our most loyal people. When we were look-ing for people to work overtime, come in on Saturday, or go to that extra mile, it was the sec-ond-chance population that was saying, 'I'm in.'" Palmer says the company hiring model has not scared away customers, but there are still struggles with some of the workers hired. Even though screened before hiring, some work-ers are not ready, such as showing up for work drunk. Yet Nehemiah management perseveres. Meyer said, "We are about second chances, third chances, and I may go to five." Questions 1. What does the story about Nehemiah Manufac-turing have to do with social responsibility? 2. How should Nehemiah leadership deal with complaints that job applicants who were not formerly incarcerated are not given equal op-portunity to be hired? 3. What recommendations might you have to CEO Dan Meyer about how many chances to give to workers who are not conducting themselves responsibly? Sources: Original story based on facts and observations in the following sources: Ruth Simon, "The Company of Second Chances,

Associated Role Play

One student plays the role of a job applicant who was rejected for a sales position at Nehemiah, and some-how gets an opportunity to review the reasons for being rejected. The candidate is suspicious that a for-merly incarcerated person with lesser qualifications was chosen for the sales position. Another student plays the role of President Richard Palmer who wants to convince the job applicant that the company was being socially responsible by choosing the other applicant.