Workforce Development: If You’re Short on Talent, Go Long on Imagination

On stage at the Vistage Greater Cincinnati Summit, I watched “hiring” swell in the word cloud, as CEOs in the room shared their top challenges in a live poll. This was no surprise; this simply validated what CEOs have been sharing in the Vistage CEO Confidence Index surveys: It’s a struggle to find qualified talent.

We all see countless headlines about AI potentially reducing the need for workers, but the efficiencies AI enables do not apply to all roles or all companies. Many businesses need humans to thrive, and what stands out to me are some non-traditional approaches that companies have successfully employed to find and hire frontline workers. No pun intended.

The CEOs who’ve found solutions to hiring challenges don’t always get there by competing harder; messaging about their purpose, adding benefits, or adjusting wages. While those things are certainly critical parts of the equation for attracting qualified talent, the most successful companies looked elsewhere entirely.

Editor’s Note: This is part of a new ongoing series examining top-of-mind concerns and challenges for CEOs of small and midsize businesses and how Vistage members are addressing them. Vistage CEO Members can continue the conversation in our Chief Executive Network (login required).

Finding an Untapped Reservoir of Loyal, Hardworking People

The first example that stood out to me is a program developed by Marcus Sheanshang, the 2026 Lifetime Achievement Award winner in Cincinnati. His company, JBM Packaging, built a program called Fair Chance. Started in 2016, this program creates employment opportunities for people returning to the workforce after being released from prison.

Where others saw risk, Marcus saw opportunity and built a program to prove it. He needed entry-level workers. He also saw people struggling to reenter the workforce.

Chocolate? Meet peanut butter.

For anyone considering a similar program for your company, take note of Marcus’s views. “These folks are hard workers, are very loyal as well, and it’s really an untapped reservoir of people,” he says. Or more simply put, “They need jobs. You need workers.”

But he does give a word of caution: “If you don’t have the right support and the right understanding of where people coming out of prison are coming from, you’re going to be disappointed because there’s definitely some different things that you need to plan for and empathize with the situation that they’re in.”

Unlocking Human Potential Through Inclusive Employment

Marcus’ efforts reminded me of another member excellence award winner that I had the opportunity to meet at the Philadelphia Vistage Executive Summit. Different business, different regions, different populations they serve, but another amazing example of aligning professional and personal values. Mike Ghesser is Founder and co-CEO of Cleanlogic, a personal care company whose vision is to help 1 billion people get nice and clean.

Their mission is deeper: to create an inclusive and accessible workplace. This comes from the personal experience of founders; Mike and his co-CEO, Isaac Shapiro, both have family members with disabilities. Cleanlogic employs differently-abled workers (blind, deaf, etc.), has braille on every product they sell, and, according to Vistage Chair Irina Baranov, “genuinely practice their nice and clean tagline”. This strategy is not just feel-good; it gets results. Accessibility may seem like a roadblock to profitability, but Mike saw revenue increase by 150% while helping his team and customers become independent and successful. And of course, clean.

I love this note on their website: “We’ve witnessed the extraordinary abilities that emerge when people are given the chance to thrive. Those experiences shaped our belief that disability isn’t a barrier to success; it’s an often-overlooked source of talent, creativity, and determination.”

Attracting Gen Z with Creative Partnerships

The first examples speak to untapped employee segments. One of those untapped segments is the next generation of workers: Generation Z. At our Summits, I’ve heard ITR Economics consistently share with CEOs the low participation rate of this generation in the traditional workforce, as well as how critical it is for companies to attract them to participate. Why? They contribute to the tax base, social security, and create a strong pipeline for the future as older workers retire or age out of the workforce.

The audience in Cincinnati learned that one way to attract Gen Z is through partnerships with local schools or colleges. I had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Monica Posey, president of Cincinnati State Technical and Community College. She shared a unique partnership the college has with a local automotive group, Kenwood Dealer Group, which has a programmatic approach to engage with this generation. It starts with participation in job fairs at local high schools to recruit students to the college’s Automotive Maintenance Technology program. But what happens next is what makes them unique.

Kenwood Dealer Group has taken on a critical role in shaping this program to ensure it gets exactly the talent it needs. They fund a state-of-the-art facility at Cincinnati State, providing cars and the latest technologies for students to learn on, as well as scholarships for those enrolled in the program. This brings a new definition to “grow your own” when it comes to talent.

The result? A steady stream of trained technicians that can be placed in jobs at different dealerships upon graduation. This holistic partnership identifies, nurtures and develops their future employees long before the need arises.

I think long-game approaches like this will be even more impactful moving forward. As the current workforce continues to age, programs like this plant the seeds for talent that can be harvested in the future.

Taking a Blue Ocean Approach to Hiring

Hiring is a universal challenge, and I’ve seen very nuanced ideas on how CEOs approach finding the people they need to scale and grow. These are just a few of the innovative companies that leveraged a creative approach with the same underlying idea. Each of these CEOs stopped competing for workers from a highly competitive talent pool and instead built and leveraged an entirely different pool.

While these examples are framed as creative hiring practices, the most significant part of each story is the service and community component. In each case, there are wins on multiple levels. Employment opportunities are created for individuals. Companies find much-needed workers. And the community benefits from people who have meaningful work — who live, work and play in the region.

These leaders are resources who want to share their success stories and best practices with the Vistage community.

That lifts our community.

If you’re looking to spark creative ways to find the right people, start by asking yourself:

• What’s one requirement in your job postings that you could remove to unlock a new source of talent?
• What is one population that could be tapped within your community to be developed into loyal, hardworking employees?
• What partnerships can help you develop not just a pool of candidates, but a sustained pipeline for the workers you need?

I am sure there are many more examples of creative talent sourcing, partnerships, and purpose-driven hiring from the Vistage community. I’m hoping our members can share your creative ideas here.

In September, I’m headed to Orange County, San Francisco, and Minneapolis. I’m interested in how members are managing growth amid uncertainty — high inflation, unchanged interest rates, and, of course, the roller coaster of tariffs. It’s less about the costs than it is the unpredictability, and I’m hoping to learn how leaders create a path forward in an unstable environment.

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