Better Together

By Al Orr - CEO, Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren

Southeastern Wisconsin is home to a diverse, talented, hard-working, and well-educated workforce. In the current environment, businesses of all sizes and in all industries are challenged to hire and retain the talent they need to fulfill their mission. The result is a frothy jobs market. Employers are raising wages, paying signing and referral bonuses, and offering increasingly flexible work arrangements. And yet, jobs go unfilled. This is true across the country, and it’s true all over the M7 region.

The hot jobs market might lead an observer to conclude that the region doesn’t need more employers competing for an already scarce resource. But supporters of economic growth in our region know otherwise. Growth is essential to opportunity. Opportunity is created when world-class manufacturers choose to relocate to or expand in our communities. Positioning southeastern Wisconsin as a region of opportunity will ultimately create an expanded workforce moving here (or staying here) for opportunity.

We all compete. We all compete with each other for workers. We compete with each other for clients and customers. And competition makes us stronger. Competition drives innovation, and it creates opportunities.

However, when it comes to making southeastern Wisconsin a region of choice for employers and employees alike, we must compete together. We must collaborate to bring new opportunity into our communities. We must compete together to showcase our region’s unique strengths, and collaborate to work on our limitations. This kind of collaboration generates more potential clients and customers for us, more support for the needs of community organizations, more innovation, and more investment in our infrastructure. We must invest together in the power of future possibilities. For all these reasons, Reinhart is proud to renew our support of the Milwaukee 7 Partnership for Economic Development.