At-Work Network

Another pioneering Bay Area program is winning accolades. San Francisco-based Job Network was honored this month by the Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy as the only welfare-to-work project geared specifically to small business.

The project is a joint venture of the Small Business Network, and nonprofits Juma Ventures and Jewish Vocational Services. In the making for more than a year, the network began offering classes and job placement to welfare recipients last July. Sixty people have enrolled in the program’s five-week courses, 53 have finished and about half of those have been placed in jobs with small businesses, said Juma Ventures’ Amy Parkhurst.

The classes help job seekers develop their computer skills, customer service skills and so-called soft skills such as interviewing well, dressing appropriately and showing up to work on time.

Scott Hauge, CEO of the Small Business Network and chair of the California Small Business Assn. set up the program after interviewing 300 small-business owners about what they would need in order to accept workers off the welfare rolls.

“This is the only [program] where a small-business organization has taken its members and gotten them to agree to hire people, and then set about getting them what they were looking for,” said Hauge, who accepted the award on Dec. 10.

Small-business owners had told Hauge “all we can bring to the table is jobs. If you want anything more than that, we probably can’t deliver. We can’t provide child care, we can’t provide transportation.”

Job Network stepped in to fill that void. In addition to providing help with those services, it tracks workers for a year after they are placed to help resolve any problems that arise. There have been a few missteps, but overall, the program is working, Hauge said.

“What this award hopefully will do is give us an opportunity to provide our model around the country because I think we have something that is clearly transferable,” he said.

*

Lee Romney can be reached at (213) 237-4884 or via e-mail at lee.romney@latimes.com.