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April 5, 2019 - Work Worth Doing - Doug Burgum
42:06
#6 - Now Hiring: Growing North Dakota's workforce, with Michelle Kommer

For the first time in recorded history, there are more jobs available in the United States than people seeking jobs. For North Dakota, that means the No. 1 barrier to growing our economy is a workforce shortage. Michelle Kommer, Commissioner of the Department of Commerce, joins us to discuss what North Dakota is doing to address our workforce challenge.

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North Dakota's history is full of legendary people, and today North Dakota is a place where anyone can be legendary.
Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States, once said, far and away, the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
This is a show about people doing just that, for the people of the great state of North Dakota.
Here's Mark Staples, a member of my team to tell you more about today's episode.
If you've listened to this podcast before, chances are you've heard us talk about workforce.
In fact, we just discussed it in our last episode when we learned how the Parks and Recreation Department helps build healthy, vibrant communities.
But workforce isn't a topic of conversation that's unique to North Dakota.
In fact, every state is confronted with an unusual national trend.
For the first time since the federal government started collecting workforce data, the United States has more jobs available than people searching for a job.
Even if every job seeker was instantly matched with an open position, there would still be more than a million unfilled jobs in the country.
Several economic factors have led us into this new territory, and we know it has big implications.
This shortage of workforce is North Dakota's number one barrier to economic growth.
So, with all of this talk about workforce, what's actually being done about it?
How can government work side by side with employers to fill the tens of thousands of jobs available in our state?
On this episode, we'll hear from Michelle Comer, Commissioner of the North Dakota Department of Commerce, to break down what's happening right now and how we're working to solve this issue in the long run.
Michelle joined the Governor's Cabinet in 2016 as the Commissioner of the Department of Labor and Human Rights, and also later assumed the role of Executive Director of Job Service N.D. Late last year, Governor Burgum appointed her to serve as the Commerce Commissioner, where she continues to tackle the important issues of workforce and economic growth.
A graduate of Mayville State University, the University of Mary, and the UND School of Law, Michelle spent more than 20 years in the private sector prior to joining Team ND. There's a lot to cover.
We'll start by discussing what the Department of Labor does for the citizens of North Dakota before digging into the workforce issues I mentioned earlier.
Here's Doug Burgum and Michelle Comer.
It's our honor to be joined today by Michelle Comer.
Michelle, so grateful that you chose to join our administration a couple years ago coming from the private sector where you had great experience in human resources operations with your Law degree and legal background across a number of different industries.
Just tell us a little bit about what was the pull that made you think that even though you had this amazing career in the private sector that working in government would be work worth doing?
Absolutely.
Well, thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today.
And, you know, I was invited to consider this opportunity one weekend in November, and it had not previously occurred to me that I might have a future in public service.
And the decision was made very quickly because, of course, your administration was coming into office and you were looking to put together a team.
It wasn't until after I said yes to that invitation that I had an opportunity to really articulate in my own mind why that was the answer.
And it really came down to three things.
One was adventure.
It was an opportunity to learn something new.
And to be terrified in a good way.
And that's something that I've always tried to challenge myself with.
The second reason was meaning.
And as you pointed out, I have always, until two years ago, worked in the private sector where profit was the main motivator.
Not to say that I hadn't always found purpose in my work because I had.
I've been very fortunate to work for some really great companies with a lot of great teammates.
But I knew somehow that this was going to be different.
I just didn't know how.
And then the third reason is you.
And I'm not just saying that because you're my boss, but it's leadership.
And I've always really intentionally and very purposefully tried to make sure that I'm working for a person, a team, and with a team that I can learn from and that I can respect.
It really came down to those three things.
It was an adventure, it was meaning, and leadership.
Those things have come true to an enormous extent.
The one that I think I would focus on mostly is that, as I said, I suspected that I would encounter Something different, working for an organization that's about service to the citizens of our state.
I had no idea what that would come to mean in real life.
And it moves and motivates me every single day to come to work for people, for example, in the Labor Department, who come to work for justice.
That's why they get up every single day.
And to be able to work with folks that are motivated for those reasons is something I'll remember for the rest of my life.
Well, thank you for having the courage.
Thank you for wanting to go on an adventure.
Thanks for taking the risk to leave behind your private sector career and to jump over and make the sacrifices, because there are many when you're working in public service.
Appreciate you making that leap.
And as we talked about the team at Labor, one of the things we talked about was reinventing government.
When you took over that job, we had a substantial backlog.
And let's maybe just share a little bit about how you dug in and the changes and the business processes and how you eliminated that in your role to bring justice.
You noted earlier that I've worked in a number of different industries and the way that I kind of describe myself is I am an attorney but I have a business first approach and I'm also a systems geek.
I love process, I love systems, I love looking at the way that a business system works and trying to see if there are opportunities for how that might work more smoothly.
And I've learned over the last 25 years this is simplified, but I think there are three levers in business.
There's operations, there's finance, and then the most important lever of all are the human beings that work in the department, in the company, in the organization.
And one of the things I'm most proud of about the work that we did in the Department of Labor to eliminate that case backlog is that We implemented a lot of ideas, none of which were mine.
All I did was ask questions of the very competent team that works there and continues to work there today to say, hey, what's getting in your way?
This is a great example because as we've talked about reinventing government Across the whole state, we've said that a lot of times the people that are on the front lines have got the best ideas and whether that's a teacher in the classroom, a person driving a snowplow or a patrol car,
whether it's an addiction counselor in human services, the people that are doing the work We often have great ideas and great leadership on your part to just unleash the potential and empower those individuals to improve.
But maybe share a little bit, I mean, the backlog you had when you stepped in and where is it today?
Well, we did have a significant case backlog, and I'll explain kind of the genesis for that was dating back to 2014, 15, and 16 when we had an abundance of activity in western North Dakota.
From employers coming into the state, employees coming into the state, and then subsequently leaving.
And so that left behind in many cases unpaid wages, wage laws that weren't complied with because perhaps the company was not a North Dakota company and just wasn't familiar with our own rules.
So that was really the cause for the high number of claims that we experienced.
Our staff size, of course, didn't change during that time.
And so, you know, what we've done since then in order to make a difference there is, like I said, it's a half dozen things ranging from in the initial contact that we have with employers or with even the person who filed the claim requesting the documents we know we're going to need right up front and being specific about what those are.
And, you know, again, moving some of our processes online.
It has made a great deal of difference.
It sounds very simple because it is, but when you have a paper form that a person can skip a box that leaves a blank for an important piece of information that's needed versus an online form that validates information we've all shopped on Amazon or other websites that say, oops, you forgot to put in such and such field, then we're starting in a much better situation from the get-go rather than chasing information.
It's a much more pleasant experience for the people that we work with.
I would go back and...
We remember every day who we serve and that's the citizens of North Dakota and so that's where we've really kept our focus in the Department of Labor is, you know, our citizens include employers, they include employees, they include people that feel as though they've been discriminated against in housing and our goal is to make that experience a positive one regardless of who we're interacting for because we know who we serve.
The Department of Labor knows that a fair, respectful, efficient, and educational experience with the state government is essential to creating a positive result for citizens.
And as we think about how to best serve the citizens of North Dakota, whether they're employers or employees, we have to think about healthy economic activity in our state as one of the key drivers for quality of life.
That's why agencies like the Department of Labor, Job Service ND, and the Department of Commerce work together to expand our economy.
Over the past decade, while there have been pockets of the state challenged by higher rates, North Dakota overall has consistently had one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country.
During nationwide economic downturns, when employers aren't growing and creating new jobs, North Dakota's low unemployment rate is a great indicator of economic well-being.
But in this new environment where the number of job openings exceeds the number of job seekers, a low unemployment rate signals that there simply won't be enough job seekers in the labor force to fill all those open positions.
The state is keeping all of this in mind as we approach solutions to our workforce needs.
Job Service ND is helping job seekers find their next opportunity, and the Commerce Department is engaging with employers, labor groups, and students of all ages to help develop solutions that work.
But there's another organization that we ask you to step into for a period of time called Job Service.
Job Service has got its roots deeply into a lot of federal programs, a lot of federal funding related to unemployment and unemployment claims.
But we ask you to step in, in addition to being Labor Commissioner, to do that for a while.
So tell us a little bit about Job Service at a high level, what it does, what it means to the citizens and And about maybe where its future might be headed.
Sure, absolutely.
Well, it was a pleasure to serve inside Job Service North Dakota and for myself to become familiar with its functions as an employer previously.
I would say that most of my interaction with Job Service North Dakota was probably paying Taxes and you know receiving reports and filing reports relating to unemployment insurance and that is a very important function at Job Service North Dakota.
We provide the unemployment insurance system for the state but there are other functions at Job Service North Dakota that are also very important to our state and one of those is our re-employment services and so we have local offices all over North Dakota And in those offices, you can visit the office.
You can also, you know, work with Job Service Online, which is a service that continues to develop.
But we help citizens create resumes, search jobs, make connections with employers.
And we also help employers do the reverse of that.
We can work with employers to help employers.
We have a job bank that today lists over 14,000 job openings as we've discussed many times.
We believe that that number is at least twice that.
Job Service North Dakota's job posting service is voluntary for one thing, which might be a reason why we don't have every open job posted and also We do have a website scraping component, so we're picking jobs off of employer websites and others to make sure that that count is as accurate as it can be.
But that being said, if Sanford, for example, has a registered nurse opening, it will only be posted one time.
There may be actually 250 open jobs behind that one job posting.
And that's why we believe that there are at least twice as many jobs open than we have listed at Job Service North Dakota.
So really, you know, valuable way for employers to make connections with employees and for us to provide supportive services and training in many cases to help employees achieve the skills that they need to fill the jobs that are open today.
From all the employers that I've spoken to, I know that if you've got...
50 welding jobs open, which I know one manufacturer has open.
They may have five positions posted, not 50. And so I think for sure we've got more than double.
I've been saying I think there's more than 30,000 jobs open in the state, and I think that's a conservative number.
So that leads us right into another important component, which you've been really involved in.
Last year, we revived the Workforce Development Council statewide.
You helped chair and lead that.
We had participation across the whole state.
Maybe talk a little bit about the great report that the Workforce Development Council put together and how that's led into some key legislation that's working through the legislature right now.
Well, that experience has been another great privilege in my time here working on the state team.
The Workforce Development Council is made up of 32 members, 21 of whom are business leaders.
We have representatives from organized labor, people representing individuals with barriers to employment.
We have two state legislators, two city and local elected officials, and then of course a number of members of our state team.
So it's this group of people that represent North Dakota in a diverse way, both geographically from an industry perspective, and then also the perspective which they bring to the table.
And it has been a great pleasure to work with this group of people to, number one, 18 months ago, start to really understand North Dakota's workforce challenge based on data and evidence, rather than based on personal impressions or industry-specific perceptions, which we all possess and are all very valid.
But we knew there was a national labor shortage, but not all labor shortages are alike.
So what are North Dakota's unique needs, unique issues?
And so we worked for about 18 months Interviewing employers, conducting economic impact and labor availability studies.
And as a result of that work, in October, we submitted to your office a report of recommendations, several dozen recommendations, and I would add that Not all of them require money or appropriations, but rather our observations of opportunities for industry to step in or for state team members to work more closely with one another and with industry.
But a number of those recommendations were translated into legislation that's being considered this legislative session.
And we're really excited about that.
We identified five themes in that report and the legislation connects directly to those themes.
One of the things that we learned through that process that makes addressing our workforce challenges in North Dakota a little bit more complicated is that there is not one place to look for the solution to workforce challenges and there is not one state agency that's in charge of finding those solutions and Working with the private sector to discover those solutions.
And so it absolutely requires a great deal of collaboration and coordination, even to understand how those dots connect.
And that was a goal of the council in the way that we prepared the report and now have a one-page map to help our legislators understand where they can look to find the roadmap to addressing our workforce shortage in North Dakota.
You mentioned very appropriately that each state's workforce needs are different.
What were some of the key themes that came out of the Workforce Development Council's work that were unique to North Dakota?
You bet.
Well, we identified after our 18 months of work five key themes.
The first is the need for earlier and more diverse career exploration for our youth.
The second is that we have a technical skills gap in North Dakota.
The third is we have a nursing shortage and a healthcare technician shortage.
We group those together.
We also realize that we need to do some work in removing barriers to employment.
And then finally, no matter how you run the numbers, we have a need for new North Dakotans.
We have more jobs than people and we have to address that need.
But it's so important to have that validated through data and evidence.
And so we learned that in North Dakota we feel like we need to do more work on exposing our students and our youth to, at an earlier age, to the wide array of job options that are available to them in North Dakota and elsewhere, which leads into the second theme of a technical skills gap.
We have a technical skills gap in North Dakota that is also not unique.
There's a technical skills gap in the nation.
What's important about that is that a lot of the jobs available in North Dakota are high-tech jobs that one is qualified for after a two-year program.
And nationwide, we have a need for a paradigm shift.
There's a 40-year-old paradigm that has developed that leads us as parents and myself included until I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time really deep in the subject that you have to go to school to get a four-year degree to get a good job.
Decades ago, decisions like that were made based on a child's cognitive abilities.
We said, you know, these kids should go to this path and these kids should go to this path.
Cognitive ability is no longer a separator between these jobs that are available to people with two-year degrees and jobs that are available to people with four-year degrees.
These are high-tech, high-paid jobs that are available in our state where a student can go to school for two years.
Many cases have their education paid for by a potential employer, graduate, and go to work for $55,000 right out of school.
That's different from 40 years ago, and it's something that I would venture to say is not well known to parents and students alike, including myself.
I'll tell a story there, too.
I was preparing for a speech The topic was called Good Jobs That Pay without a BA, only because it rhymed.
It meant any job that you could achieve without a bachelor's degree.
And as I was preparing for this in the den on a weekend, my husband came in and said, what are you doing?
And I explained to him what I was doing, and he smirked and said, so you'd be okay if the girls went and got a two-year degree.
And I said, uh-oh, this is where the rubber meets the road in my head.
And my answer to him was an affirmative, yes, I absolutely would be.
But I wouldn't have been able to answer that question had I not been so deeply immersed in understanding the career options that are available for kids in our state, because that's what I had been spending my time on for two whole weeks.
What parent gets that opportunity?
What child gets that opportunity?
What guidance counselor gets that opportunity, necessarily?
Michelle, you mentioned the technical opportunities and two-year degrees and $55,000 job openings.
I don't want to say I'll match you and raise you, but Lieutenant Governor and I had an opportunity to visit the Bismarck Career Academy here in Bismarck, which is a joint venture between Bismarck State College and the public school system here in Bismarck.
It was October, so we were in a freshman classroom.
So these would be students that were two months into their post-high school career.
They'd completed the first year of their BA when they were in high school by attending the Career Academy while in high school.
Their second year would be their freshman year.
I asked the professor in the room, will these students get jobs?
And he pointed to two young men and said, both of those folks already have $62,000 a year job offers.
So we're talking about an employer, as you said, the employer was willing to pay for their schooling for the second semester.
And so this is a high-paying job with no college debt, and we got $1.5 trillion of college debt in our country.
And so the paradigm shift towards understanding where the opportunities are and breaking the cultural view of a four-year degree is a must.
I agree with you as a parent.
I went through that myself with my kids and understanding and growing as a parent that there are great opportunities and great career paths in life.
And then the other thing is if someone gets a two-year degree, They often, later in life, go back and get more education, because this is not about, you've got to get a degree by the time you're 22 years old, and it's a four-year degree, and then what do I do?
This is about stackable certificates, and the first certificate might be a 16-week software coding degree, or it might be a one-year certification or a two-year BA, but often the people that achieve that, they learn how to learn, and they learn the love of learning, and they keep their curiosity to go back.
So I would say to parents, If you've got a child that wants to get a certificate or degree, encourage them because it's going to put them on a path towards lifelong learning.
We just, again, have to have a mindset.
could be great for them because we're not saddling young entrepreneurs and innovators with a bunch of college debt that might prevent them from chasing their real dreams.
We've been focusing on workforce issues during this episode, but workforce is just one part of a greater economic ecosystem in North Dakota.
The Commerce Department summarizes its mission like this, to lead North Dakota's efforts to attract, retain, and expand wealth.
Commerce does this by focusing on industries like advanced manufacturing, technology, energy, and value-added agriculture, where commerce programs like the Agricultural Products Utilization Commission, or APOC, has distributed more than $9 million to 193 North Dakota companies in the past eight years. . has distributed more than $9 million to 193 North Dakota The Commerce Department also includes our Tourism Division, which helps promote North Dakota to the rest of the world.
As our third largest industry, tourism brings approximately 22 million annual visitors to North Dakota, which translates to $3 billion in visitor spending.
The Commerce Department is focusing on how to use its resources to empower people who are working to make North Dakota the best place to live.
Well, again, I want to thank you for your leadership on that and thank everybody that served on it.
It was really a blue-chip, all-star panel of business leaders and legislators and policymakers from across the state.
And I know that a number of the pieces of recommendations that were legislation are still working their way through because we believe that our workforce shortage is the number one gating factor, the number one thing that's slowing down our economy.
And that's been quite a shift.
I mean, economic development from 80s, 90s, and 2000s was all about job creation, job creation, job creation, and sometimes job creation meant trying to recruit businesses to come to North Dakota.
Now, we have...
The existing businesses that are here have 30,000 jobs open, so we have to really shift our whole thinking about economic development towards workforce development and retention.
And that means we have to shift how we think about the Commerce Department, which to have one of its key themes be workforce development and retention.
And of course, that led, when we had an opening in commerce, we said, "Michelle, will you step up "and take on the commerce role?" But commerce is a lot more than that, so tell us a little bit about the breadth of commerce and all the great things that are going on in commerce.
The Department of Commerce has a broad scope in some ways.
You could say that we manage dozens and dozens of programs.
But I do like to, in my head, organize things.
Like I said, I'm a systems geek.
And it's really quite easy to organize the Commerce Department into three areas.
One is economic development and diversification.
And we know that we have two really strong and important industries in North Dakota, that being in energy and ag.
But we also know that those industries can be subject to volatility and we know the importance of working really hard to see that we're diversifying in smart places and so that's a huge focus of our department.
Another of the three areas that I organize the Department of Commerce in is what I call community building.
And we have a lot of functions inside the Department of Commerce that plug into that, and not the least of which is, of course, you know, the Main Street Initiative.
And when I talk about the Main Street Initiative, I like to remind people that the word initiative can sound like it's a one-time thing, but Main Street Initiative is a philosophy.
It is a way of building communities.
And it's more important to our state probably than many others because of the rural nature of our state.
And so if we're focusing on the three pillars of Main Street initiative, we are also focusing on economic development and diversity, and we're also focusing on Workforce and having healthy, vibrant communities.
So that's kind of how we talk about community building.
And again, it's so critical to our state that that is a goal and a target of ours to get good at that and to understand the philosophy and to understand how it translates into action in each of our communities.
And then the third bucket is workforce.
And I put it in a bucket by itself, but it can be tucked into those other buckets as well.
And as you just pointed out, it is our number one gating factor.
I just got a text on my way in here from a member of our Economic Development Foundation who said that She had just received a message from one of her suppliers in North Dakota who said he's shutting his doors because he cannot find labor to support his business.
And so it's a real life example of how the workforce shortage is affecting us in real life every day.
And it's important enough, I think, that we highlight it as one of those three important priorities of the department.
Now, I can't forget the importance of tourism and state brand and marketing.
And so if I speak about things in three buckets, then I would say that there's a really wonderful umbrella over all three of them that's protecting them from rain and letting the sun shine through.
It was explained to me by someone else that tourism is the first date for workforce.
And I love that saying because it is the introduction of people from outside of North Dakota to our state, and it's the experience that people have, and it can be the experience that encourages people to come here and make this a great place to live and to raise a family and to work, and it's a really important part of the function at Commerce as well.
Yeah, I have to agree with you on sort of the umbrella concept on tourism because it's a unique thing.
Today, for the first time in the history of the United States, we have more jobs available than we have people seeking jobs.
When we had the boom in western North Dakota that happened earlier this decade, We're good to go.
And we are competing with places that have different attributes, whether it's the communities, whether it's recreational opportunities, whether it's weather, whether it's other amenities that they might have, whether it's just being close to family.
So we've got to compete harder than ever to attract because we're only graduating about 7,000 kids a year right now from high school, which is less than we were in the year 2000. So there are not enough kids coming out of high school or college to fill the jobs, and so we have to be about net in-migration, as you say, in the way to introduce people.
To our state is with a positive experience through tourism because if it's a place that you enjoy visiting and maybe your kids enjoyed coming to, then maybe they would actually want to live there.
So those things tie completely together.
For sure they do.
But tell us a little bit more about the value-added stuff that we're working on in both ag and energy and some of the key programs that Commerce is involved in.
Of course I'm learning real time and one of the things that's been really wonderful to understand from a systems perspective is all of the variety of opportunities and programs that commerce makes available to individuals and businesses who are looking to start a company, that are looking to expand a company.
Looking to grow, looking to diversify, and it's just really special to, number one, know that we have that kind of support available through the state of North Dakota, and number two, have some small role in helping those companies be successful.
So that's an example of a funding opportunity.
Another similar might be A program that we call APUC for its acronym, which is the Agriculture Product Utilization Commission.
And there too, it's a funding opportunity for a company that qualifies under those parameters.
Now you might hear the word agriculture in that acronym, but certainly it is an agriculture related support tool, but we have Value-added ag firms, tech firms that relate to agriculture in some way, utilizing that tool.
And it's another arrow in the quiver, so to speak, or tool in the toolbox of the variety of financing opportunities that we have available through the Department of Commerce to help companies grow.
So another example, and this is where I'll tell the story, is Innovate ND.
And Innovate ND is a program by which an entrepreneur can engage and get business coaching to help them with an idea that they have, to help them create a business plan, to help them bring that idea from just an idea, from the light bulb over the head, to an actual product. to help them bring that idea from just an idea,
And in our appropriations testimony a few weeks ago, I got to hear one of the people speak to her experience with Innovate ND.
And it was actually really moving.
After she spoke, I wanted to stand up and clap.
And for those of you that haven't been in an Appropriations Committee hearing, you should know that that would be entirely inappropriate to do in an Appropriations hearing.
But she told this story.
She said...
And I liked all parts of it, including that she had moved here from Minnesota.
So she moved to North Dakota from Minnesota with her husband for his work.
They had four kids, and she was staying at home with the kids, but she was a photographer on the side.
And she said that her strap kept getting in her way.
And it was a conventional strap that every photographer uses to...
Secure their camera.
And so she had an idea of how to create a better strap that wouldn't get in the way of the photographer's work.
And so she said, I had no idea what to do, but I had a great idea.
And someone connected her with Innovate ND, where she got to work with a coach to develop that idea, to develop the business plan, to develop the product.
And the punchline is that she is now selling that strap in every state in our country as well as internationally because of her interaction with that program.
The product is ergonomically designed and it doesn't cut into professional photographers' necks.
And I've seen photographers here at the Capitol wearing two of them, one on their left shoulder and one on their right shoulder, because like you work in an event and you've got two or three different cameras that have a lot of weight that you're carrying around all day, it could actually lead to You know, disability claims.
I mean, in terms of, you know, neck pain, back pain, shoulder pain, whatever.
So, I mean, this thing is a, solves a real problem for professional photographers and created right here with the support of Innovate ND. So great, great, great story.
But we're also into supporting university work as well.
We have a program called Research ND. Tell us a little bit about that.
Well, I too have had an opportunity to learn about that in the last several months.
And, you know, there are a lot of people that could speak much more deeply about that than I can.
But what we do know and what we should all know as citizens of North Dakota is that research through our university system is really a bedrock for a number of things.
You know, eventually economic development and a bedrock for companies to come to North Dakota, to grow in North Dakota.
For ideas, again, to be developed and turned into very, very valuable intellectual property.
And so our ability, and I should say not to mention the greater good that research often does result in.
That's why it's research.
And so through Research North Dakota, again, we're able to provide support.
To individuals that have concepts, ideas, the light bulb over the head, to pursue those ideas through the entire process.
And oftentimes those ideas turn into commercialized products, and sometimes they don't.
Sometimes they turn into vaccinations and those types of things.
But really important to North Dakota, really important to the communities that house the institutions where the researchers live and do their work.
Really important to the students that attend those research universities and it's something that again is very important in North Dakota.
In this session we have seen a lot of interest in supporting research in North Dakota.
I believe there are three bills I think or at least were three bills that emphasize the need for North Dakota to support research through its university systems and I am very, very hopeful that this session we will see an investment in research because it's just so important on a broader level to our entire state.
So, Michelle, with all the varied, because there's dozens and dozens of programs, we've only touched on a few, if people want to learn more about the way we support innovators and entrepreneurs and researchers and ag producers and value added energy producers, I mean, where do they learn more about this?
Where do they go online?
Yeah, great question.
Well, that would be on our North Dakota Department of Commerce website.
And I would also urge a person who's got an idea, is interested in learning more, to reach out to us directly.
We have an economic development division at the Department of Commerce.
I've had the opportunity to meet our team members to understand their specialties, their commitment to economic growth in North Dakota, and they would be absolutely thrilled to visit with folks that are interested in learning more as well, which I think is a wonderful advantage of our Of our state and it's something that I've learned a lot about over the last two years that,
you know, I took this job because I love North Dakota and this job has made me love the state even more because we are so connected in wanting to help each other be successful, wanting to support each other and I see that every day at the Department of Commerce.
In addition to the Commerce Department website, we've got a special website for Main Street.
We have over 60 communities that have indicated an interest.
A number of them have issued proclamations.
I think we've had teams, including myself, Lieutenant Governor, and yourself and others, I have visited 44 different cities in North Dakota, but I would encourage people to go to MainStreetND.com to learn more about the three pillars of Main Street,
which includes healthy, vibrant communities, workforce attraction, retention, and smart, efficient infrastructure, and we've got programs and ideas to help Because every community has got open positions, and if you've got open positions, the way you track them is building a community that people want to live in, making sure your property taxes are low by having smart, efficient infrastructure, and so all these tie together.
And again, encourage people to go to MainStreetND.com.
Michelle, as we wrap up today, you have described at the beginning that this was an adventure, it had purpose, and wanting to work with a committed team of other leaders.
But when you think about this job and you think about work worth doing, and I know you're very dedicated to your family and as a mother, but tell us a little bit about what makes this work worth doing.
Well, that's a tough one to answer in a very brief way, but I think the answers are both big and small.
You know, I think we're all here every day because we believe that we can make a positive difference, and I believe that to be true.
But it's the little things, too.
I often say that a great workforce culture doesn't result from big benefits or some coffee bar, free coffee, free popcorn, but rather, and those things are great, by the way, don't get me wrong, but rather a workplace that's made up of the little things,
the you-didn't-have-to-do-that moments, And so I get pretty excited when I see those moments in our teams and in our workplaces, too, that we're not only coming to work every day to make a difference for the citizens of North Dakota, but we're also here to make each other's lives a little bit better every day, too.
It's been a fantastic adventure.
All those three reasons that I stated in the beginning have come true and then some in ways I couldn't have even imagined when I joined this team a couple years ago, and I'm really grateful.
So thank you.
Well, we're grateful that you took the leap and joined and we're grateful for your leadership of the organizations you've had a chance to lead so far with labor and job service for a while as interim and then now commerce full-time.
And so we appreciate you doing that and we appreciate you being part of the cabinet team because we've got a great cabinet team of people that support each other that are all committed to Empowering people, improving lives, and inspiring success.
And thank you for making this a great place to work.
And thanks for the energy and the positivity that you bring to your job every day, because I know that the work you're doing is making a difference for the citizens of North Dakota.
So thank you.
Thank you.
The legislature is considering some of the recommendations by the Workforce Development Council during this legislative session to help combat the workforce shortage in our state.
In the meantime, there's something that every single listener can do to help.
Tell your friends about North Dakota.
Nothing can solve our workforce shortage better than a net in-migration of job seekers and their families moving here to enjoy what our state has to offer.
If you need help convincing them, send them to ndtourism.com to show them what it means to be legendary.
On our next episode of Work Worth Doing, we discuss another aspect of what makes North Dakota a unique place to live, work, and play.
Terry Steinwand, Director of the Game and Fish Department, sits down with the Governor to talk turkey and grouse, ducks, geese, deer, elk, moose, walleye, and more.
That's all for now.
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