VOL. 37, NO. 45
NOVEMBER 7 - 13, 2016
Source Lunch
Health Case researchers could play crucial part in fight against malaria. Page 4
CLEVELAND BUSINESS
Kareemah Williams on manufacturing’s role in the region. Page 48 EMPLOYMENT
The List Northeast Ohio’s largest hospitals. Page 51
BUSINESS OF LIFE | PAGE 46
County A labor of love working on career pathways By JAY MILLER jmiller@crain.com @millerjh
When Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish cut the ribbon on the county’s new Work Opportunity Resource Center last Tuesday, Nov. 1, he also was kicking off a new approach to helping people move from welfare to not just a job, but, he hopes, to a career. The WORC, on the first floor of the county’s human services building on Payne Avenue, is the most visible expression of Budish’s strategy to merge the county’s social welfare services with its newly focused workforce program, until now a part of its economic development department. The plan is to create a silo-breaking operation that guides unemployed or underemployed people on public assistance into an entry-level job and then, even after they have exhausted their welfare eligibility, helps them build a career. The career piece comes by finding training programs that lead to advancement, or by helping to find affordable day care or transportation to work, for as much as five years as workers move up the ladder from a first job to a higher-paying job. It has been called a career pathways approach that, so far, has been tried only in small-scale, narrowly focused pilot programs. “Basically, we’re transforming the workforce system,” Budish said. “We’ve got a lot of programs to train people, but it’s not working together as a system.” Part of the problem is that the welfare system has been satisfied to move people from welfare to a first, entry-level job but then cuts them loose, leaving former welfare clients to figure out for themselves how to find the next-level job or the training SEE COUNTY, PAGE 45
Eugene Holtier, who came to the United States from Romania in 1985, isn’t a musician by trade. In fact, he started his career as an industrial designer before finding work as a car salesman to pay the bills. Now, his handcrafted instruments, which are made in his North Ridgeville workshop, have found homes across the country. One of his cellos is even in the Cleveland Orchestra. (Tim Harrison for Crain’s)
FINANCE
Banks large and small brace for shockwave of Wells Fargo scandal By JEREMY NOBILE jnobile@crain.com @JeremyNobile
Huntington Bancshares Inc. CEO Steve Steinour addressed the elephant in the room when, unprompted, he told investors during a third-quarter earnings call that Huntington Bank was reviewing sales in-
centives and the ways its bankers interact with customers. It’s a topic that doesn’t normally come up in investor calls, where conversation mostly focuses on bank performance and market outlooks. But this past quarter was a atypical from others, as the banking industry was marred by a massive scandal uncovered at Wells Fargo in September involving some 2 million bogus cus-
tomer accounts opened to inflate sales figures. The result was thousands of fired staff, fines and a serious blemish on the San Francisco-based bank’s reputation in the market. Steinour, like many of his fellow executives at other banks, told analysts he doesn’t anticipate Huntington's review turning up anything questionable that would result in
material changes to their procedures. Yet, “I think we’ll be a little more proactive in terms of how we measure performance,” he said. That Huntington, a reputable bank that has drawn its share of awards and recognitions for consumer service, is proactively addressing such issues underscores the aftershock that event is having on the industry. SEE BANKS, PAGE 50
Entire contents © 2016 by Crain Communications Inc.
Focus on Small Business When pigs fly: Local restaurants are cooking up some good BBQ, and more is on the way Page 15 Adviser, Tax Tips Page 16 Kathy Vegh’s newest venture Page 19