For the past 20 years, Colorado’s smoking cessation rate has been higher than the national average. Spring/Summer 2024 was no exception.
The U.S. unemployment rate in April was 2.2, while Colorado’s was 3.2. Colorado’s unemployment rate in June was 2.5, while the U.S. rate was only 2.0. According to the latest data from July, the smoking cessation rate in the United States was 2.1, compared to 3.2 in the United States.
The National Bureau of Statistics defines the turnover rate as the number of people leaving a company “over the entire month relative to the number of employees.”
At the same time, the state’s unemployment rate rose to 4% in August, the highest level since January 2022, according to an Aug. 20 report from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.
According to the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, data on retirement and turnover rates is not broken down by county or region. There are only state-wide statistics. But state officials said the Western Slope faces unique challenges that can lead to high turnover and low employee retention.
Silverthorne resident Erin Young is an employer coach with the Colorado Workforce Development Council, part of the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. She works with a variety of corporate entities and workforce development centers, and her work primarily involves identifying ways to increase employee numbers and keep people employed. said. Young’s work spans the entire state.
He said Western Slope businesses have to deal with the uncontrollable factors that come with living in the High Country when it comes to attracting and retaining staff. For example, people quit their jobs and migrate from the Western Slope for a variety of reasons, including the cost of living, lack of affordable housing, and sometimes just to escape the winter. Some people quit their jobs on the Western Slope, and others quit their jobs for similar reasons. For example, some people may want to be closer to larger cities where they have more resources and options in areas such as health care.
For the Colorado Workforce Development Council, it comes down to promoting job quality when it comes to keeping people in jobs across the state. The office is focused on helping workplaces create jobs that people want to keep.
A predictable, livable wage is one of the most important factors that make or break people staying in their current jobs.
Mr Young said he found that earning a wage to support a family was a priority for people. People express that they need enough money to support themselves and their families. Whether you have children of your own, if you have taken on the role of caring for an elderly loved one, or if you are helping raise a younger family member. Families can also include the cost of pets and their veterinary care.
He said workers don’t just want to be able to support themselves, they also want to feel like they can build wealth with their wages.
“Wealth building is not just about being able to pay your bills, it’s about being able to save as much as possible for life’s big expenses, like a wedding, college, having children, or a down payment on a house.” ” she says.
While certain businesses, such as small businesses, face constraints in terms of offering competitive wages, there are other ways to keep employees employed. Benefits are also at the top of the list of reasons why people keep their jobs, and Young said strong benefits can take many forms beyond providing the best health insurance, adding: Not all companies can afford to pay that.”
She said what employers felt was important was to offer personalized benefits to specific staff. In some cases, employee retention benefits have nothing to do with traditional benefits like health insurance or 401ks.
For example, Young once owned Red Buffalo Coffee and Tea in Silverthorne and traded free coffee for free yoga classes at local studios for his employees. Personalized benefits can help small businesses retain their employees even when they don’t have enough money in the bank.
Andrew Beckler is a Steamboat Springs small business owner who founded Glass Sticks, which specializes in bamboo ski poles. He said it can be difficult for small business owners to offer top-notch health insurance, so they’re focusing on other retention efforts they know their employees will appreciate.
By offering employees a generous schedule that they can control, Beckler gives his employees the option to ski every day and never miss a powder day. It also provides a bonus of the full Ikon pass or equivalent value.
“We all make sacrifices to live here, primarily for access to ski resorts,” Beckler said in an email. “If we didn’t have ski lifts, we might all live in a more affordable place with great access to the outdoors (but without ski lifts).”
Benefits also include various forms of support, such as providing childcare and allowing you to bring your pet to work so you don’t have to pay someone to care for it or let it out. It will be.
Copper Mountain Resort recently built a child care center where employees are given priority and do not have to wait on the long waiting lists that exist at nearly every child care facility in the county.
Western Slope businesses should not only focus on retaining their employees, but also on hiring them in the first place. Summit County government introduced a new hiring platform called NeoGov this year with a more user-friendly experience to streamline the application process, officials said.
Staff at Silverthorne Animal Hospital say the hospital is struggling to retain staff due to rising housing costs. As a result, the hospital decided to prioritize employee housing when relocating its offices.
Veterinarian Justin Milizio said the new hospital will include about 4,000 square feet of employee housing when it moves in this fall. This includes three units and a total of eight bedrooms.
“When hiring veterinary staff, we are already looking for people with specialized training and will need to look outside the county to recruit staff to fill vacancies,” Milizio said in an email. mentioned in. “We hope that the staff housing we are building will help with the recruitment process.”