Worcester Business Journal

wbjournal.com | September 19, 2022 | Worcester Business Journal 21 Work from home, or work from the library V I E W P O I N T E D I T O R I A L T he COVID pandemic demonstrated not all sectors require daily time in the office to be productive. Workers have sought to find a balance of in-person and work-from-home time. While this is something many workers are now seeking, others are looking for a place to balance out the chaos or tight quarters of home. Co-work- ing facilities provide benefits to some, but not all have the financial or transportation means to benefit from those resources. Enter your public library. Massachusetts is extremely fortu- nate to have a high concentration of public libraries, nearly every town has one. Additionally, residents enjoy the benefits of one of the country's few public library construction pro- grams, which works to improve facilities through funding, planning, design, and construction projects, enabling towns and cities to build the libraries their community needs. And many of them have everything you are looking for in a workspace. e main branch of the Worcester Public Library is located in downtown Worcester, accessible by train and bus, and located next to a large municipal parking lot. In its three public floors, it has high-speed Wi-Fi, large tables, quiet nooks, printing, copying, and faxing services. In its 2021 renovation, the library re-imagined its study rooms to be more than simple private rooms for tutoring. ese new rooms come with whiteboards for ideating and TVs for presentations, group work, or that unwieldy Excel doc- ument that you cannot see on your laptop. ese rooms are free and can be used for client meetings, private conversa- tions, or just a quiet place to work. Other libraries through- out the state have study rooms available, and you can book most online for your planning needs. If you are starting a business or looking to grow your work, check your library for its small business resources and access to news and consumer information. Many libraries have online resources you can access anytime. If you don't have a library card, get an immediate eCard from your library website. In addition, libraries with larger populations commonly have regular programs and classes centered around small business, website building, and grant writing. In addition to print books, audiobooks, newspapers, and magazines, your library has a huge collection of eBooks and eAudio for immediate use on your device. You may have not visited your library in sometime, but while you were away the librarians were hard at work, changing with the demands of your community and cre- ating library services very different from your experience as a child. But at the core, their mission stays the same, to enrich the lives of their community and create a space for all to thrive. Jason Homer is executive director of the Worcester Public Library. W orkforce shortages are nothing new, especially for many of our more traditional industries. Manufacturers have been ringing the bell for years over a lack of qualified applicants. Other professions and industry sectors have suffered as the training and education system in Central Massachusetts, the state, and the country just wasn't geared toward producing a pipeline of available and qualified workers, like CNC machinists or master electricians. e workforce development system has been shiing to supply more trained employees to meet demand, but this effort takes time. What has been new over the past two years is those workforce shortages now are hitting nearly every industry. Businesses that previously had little difficulty finding available workers now have to go on the hunt to find the employees they need, oen offering one-time bonuses and a significant spike in salary and benefits. To see an example of the power workers now wield, look no further than the unionization of graduate students at Clark University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and UMass Chan Medical School. As Staff Writer Timothy Doyle details on page 12 in his "Graduate unions" story, this traditionally low-cost transient labor for colleges and universities is seeking greater voice and agency for what has traditionally been BY JASON HOMER Special to WBJ The above Editorial is the opinion of the WBJ Editorial Board. The Viewpoint column, the A Thousand Words cartoon, and the Word from the Web commentary represent the opinions of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of WBJ or its staff. WBJ welcomes letters to the editor and commentary submissions. Send them to bkane@wbjournal.com. A T H O U SA N D WO R D S B Y R A M Ó N L . S A N D O V A L Keep your workers happy Jason Homer seen as an apprenticeship. Beyond the tried and true methods of offering higher pay and better benefits, employers are getting creative in finding new ways to attract employees: flexible work schedules, work- from-home options, working remotely from a completely different geographic region, paying for training and advanced college degrees. Eventually, the labor shortages are going to calm down and lessen, hopefully for most industries. Even if you're one of the fortunate to not have to deal with a lack of a qualified workforce a year from now, it's important to stick with both the old and new methods of attracting workers. And it's key to keep good people happy in their roles and at your company, regardless of how many new applicants you have beating down the door. e good news is the workforce shortages might dissipate some, with the evidence that Greater Worcester colleges and universities are seeing a spike in applicants this school year, a positive as more younger students will be entering the job market a few years down the road. e last couple years have changed much about the economy and the way businesses have to operate. ere's no returning to the ways things were before the coronavirus pandemic, but it'll fall to the best businesses to figure out how to take the lessons learned from this bumpy road to build a team to create a more prosperous future. W W

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