Louisville Community Initiative

Section II – History of Firm and Description of Services Offered

The mission of LCI has been to create systematic methods for moving youth and adults towards self-sufficiency by focusing on job development and improved access to career-path training and employment. LCI has sought to realize its mission by consulting to build new partnerships among existing programs. Through these partnerships, LCI has bridged the gap from school or unemployment to careers that lead to becoming self-sufficient. The focus is a dual customer approach where both job seekers (youth and adults) and employers are customers. LCI Consulting focuses on four main areas:

Workforce Development Consulting

LCI provides an array of consulting services for businesses and community-based organizations. Those services include defining the competencies of workforce stakeholders and determining local workforce needs; developing business plans and pro- forma for public-private workforce partnerships, drafting and facilitating Request for Qualifications (RFQ) and Request for Proposals (RFP); developing and negotiating Memoranda of Agreements for workforce partners; conducting evidence based research to measure the capacity of community and faith-based organizations to recruit, train and retain candidates; providing evidence based research to measure employers commitment to hire fully qualified candidates; conducting research to determine the viability of local/regional Workforce Intermediaries.

Sector Initiatives

LCI Consulting has developed industry sector consortia. Each industry consortium consisted of schools, one or more businesses, Chamber of Commerce, representatives of school-to-career staff, community-based organizations and an LCI business liaison. The function of these business consortia was to identify barriers to opportunities and build bridges that benefit the youth and adults, the school, the employer, and the community. By learning the business culture, cycle and skill sets necessary for success by industry, we were able to match participants to employer needs. Our industry consortia and programs were in information technology, healthcare, banking and finance, building trades and engineering and automotive. Four Hundred ninety one (491) have been placed in employment.

Community Initiatives

Dollar General and LCI developed a 12-week training program in a low income community which provided 20 hours a week of classroom training in work readiness at the Jefferson Community College and 20 hours a week of on-the-job training in a Dollar General store. At the end of this period, the trainee is placed in a permanent full-time job. Seventy-eight (78) completed the program. All were placed in full-time employment; forty-six (46) were employed by Dollar General full-time. Thirteen (13) were promoted to manager with three (3) being promoted a second time.

Turnover Analysis

A method of measuring the impact LCI participants have on an employer is to determine a company’s cost per hire. This process is one where employers calculate their direct hiring costs (advertising, internal referral bonuses, open houses, etc.) and divide that number by the number of persons hired for the time period. Multiplying the cost per hire by the number we connect to employers determines a return on investment (ROI). Below is an example.

	Employer Savings	Employer Investment (donations)
1st Year 2nd year 3rd Year Total ROI	$108,000 $163,000 $171,000 $442,000 125%	$60,000 $51,900 $84,750 $196,650

Retention

LCI has provided retention services to businesses and colleges partners. Such partnerships have resulted in significant improvements that have yielded substantial financial savings and return on investment.