How IndyCar Is Using PeopleReady To Help Address The Labor Shortage

SportsMoney How IndyCar Is Using PeopleReady To Help Address The Labor Shortage Bruce Martin Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. I have been chasing race cars since the first Michigan 500 in 1981. New! Follow this author to improve your content experience.

Got it! Jun 23, 2022, 06:00am EDT | Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Josef Newgarden celebrates with the PeopleReady Force for Good Challenge worth $1 million at Road . . .

[+] America. INDYCAR Photo by Joe Skibinski What sets the NTT IndyCar Series apart from other forms of racing is the versatility of each driver and team. They have to contend on street courses, natural terrain road courses and high-speed ovals.

For a driver to win a race on all three types of tracks in the same season is generally championship quality. PeopleReady, a company that helps connect available workers with available jobs, recognized that when it joined forces with IndyCar. The company signed on as a team sponsor at Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing in 2020 with Takuma Sato of Japan and were rewarded with a trip to Victory Lane at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway when Sato won the 104 th Indianapolis 500 on August 23, 2020.

The relationship continued to grow. PeopleReady joined forces with IndyCar to help provide staffing at many of its venues, including the famed Indianapolis 500. Many of the concession and hospitality workers and ticket takers at this year’s Indianapolis 500 were connected through PeopleReady.

The company decided to make an even bigger presentation in January when it announced the first driver to win on a street course, road course and oval in 2022 would win the PeopleReady Force for Good Challenge worth $1 million. The prize would be split with $500,000 going to the team and driver and the other $500,000 going to charities chosen by the driver. When Team Penske driver Josef Newgarden won the second and third races of the season by mid-April, he was already in position to win the $1 million prize.

Newgarden drove the No. 2 Team Penske Chevrolet to victory on the oval at Texas Motor Speedway in the March 20 Xpel 375 and scored a big win in the Acura Grand Prix of St. Petersburg on April 10.

Recommended For You 1 WWE Extreme Rules 2021 Results: Winners, News And Notes As Roman Reigns Beats The Demon More stories like this Fewer stories like this 2 The World’s Highest-Paid Soccer Players 2021: Manchester United’s Cristiano Ronaldo Reclaims Top Spot From PSG’s Lionel Messi More stories like this Fewer stories like this 3 The Good, Bad And Ugly From The Green Bay Packers’ Win Over The San Francisco 49ers More stories like this Fewer stories like this Pato O’Ward won at Barber Motorsports Park on May 1, Colton Herta won on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course on May 14, Marcus Ericsson won the 106 th Indianapolis 500 on May 29 and Will Power won the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix on June 5. Newgarden finally claimed the $1 million PeopleReady Force for Good Challenge with a victory in the June 12 Sonsio Grand Prix at Road America. Newgarden led a race-high 26 of 55 laps, taking the top spot for good during pit stops on Lap 43.

Josef Newgarden in the No. 2 PPG Chevrolet at Road America INDYCAR Photo “I was just trying to stay focused on what I had to do,” Newgarden said. “Just an unbelievable job by everybody at Team Penske.

“To finally get it done and most importantly to give that money to charity, half of that money is going to charity with SeriousFun Network and Wags and Walks Nashville. I hope they’re happy about it. That’s a lot of money coming their way.

“You’ve got to be on your toes at all times (in this series). You can go in with a plan, but you probably have to change your plan 90 percent of the time once the race starts to unfold. To be able to hit all these disciplines with this team, for me it’s the best series in the world.

” A Team Penske driver won on all three types of tracks in a season four times in five years between 2016-20, with Newgarden in 2017 and 2020, Simon Pagenaud in 2019 and Will Power in 2016. Taryn Owen is the COO and President of PeopleReady and PeopleScout, companies that specialize in connecting willing and able workers to fill much-needed jobs during the labor shortage that has dramatically impacted the United States economy during the pandemic. Although nearly all companies have called employees back to work, many without Covid-19 restrictions, the workforce has changed dramatically from the pre-pandemic days of March 2020.

Owen and PeopleReady saw a high-speed, fast-paced sport such as IndyCar provide a great marketing vehicle to create awareness for its company and help minimize the current labor shortage. I had an exclusive interview with Owen, who explained the success of the program, who the company is trying to reach and how to fill much-needed shortages in the workforce. Taryn Owen, COO and President of PeopleReady PeopleReady Photo “Why we did the program leads into the value that we’ve seen,” Owen told me.

“Our mission in the PeopleReady business is to connect people and work and be a force for good in the communities that we serve by putting people to work and helping businesses really get assets to the workforce that they need to be successful in each of their unique businesses. “In 2021, we put 220,000 people to work with our mission and were able to help 94,000 businesses across North America. “The concept of the PeopleReady Force for Good Challenge has provided us with a good platform to amplify awareness of our brand, of our mission and to ensure that people know that we are here to help whether they need a job or staffing support, particularly during this time when it’s so challenging to find people to come to work.

“In addition to that, the challenge has helped us further our commitment in making a difference in the communities that we serve. That’s important to us to contribute to charitable donations. This is a way for us to do that in a broad and meaningful way.

“Our ability to amplify our brand and mission through this challenge has really helped us accelerate our ability to reach more people, to reach more associates that need work and customers that need people. ” Why Are Worker and Staff Shortages Continuing Long After Covid Restrictions Have Ended? Many companies are begging for people to work in order to keep the doors open. Some are offering incentive packages with increased pay and sizeable bonuses.

With the worker seeming to have an advantage in today’s marketplace, why are worker and staff shortages continuing? The labor force participation rate took a drastic drop at the start of the pandemic. During the worst of the pandemic in April 2020, that rate dropped to 60. 2 percent.

It has been slowly recovering but has still only reached 62. 3 percent, according to statistics provided by PeopleReady. There are nearly 4 million fewer workers in the labor force than before the beginning of the pandemic.

Reasons for the decline include early retirements, family care responsibilities, and health and safety concerns. Women have accounted for a larger proportion of those who left the labor force, largely due to caretaking and homeschooling responsibilities. The pandemic also brought on an increased wave of retirements among older Americans.

More than 3 million Americans retired in 2020, compared to an average of about 2 million per year since 2011. Some left earlier in the pandemic over fears of illness. Others who have left later into the pandemic have cited issues like burnout in the new world of work.

“I think what we saw was a tremendous amount of people leave the workforce during the pandemic that haven’t come back,” Owen explained. “Whether it’s individuals who decided to retire, or retirees who decided not to comeback and supplement their income. Or multi-working families that decided to have an individual stay home, we have not seen those individuals return to the workforce yet.

“That is heavily contributing to the shortage of people that we have available. ” While some of the older members of the workforce chose to retire, and others decided to simplify their lives with less-stressful positions, there remains another conundrum. If people of prime working age are not participating in the workforce, and government unemployment and stimulus aid exhausted, who is paying the bills if they are not working? “That’s a great question,” Owen said.

“I don’t know. It is a very interesting phenomenon, isn’t it? I don’t think anyone really understands that totally. ” Boom Time for Gig and Temporary Workers For those who prefer to be part of the Gig and Temporary Worker economy, PeopleReady can help connect willing workers to a variety of jobs in both categories.

“It can be both,” Owen said. “We have jobs available for people who might want more gig work type of opportunities where they work a day here and a day there. We also have full-time temporary jobs.

If somebody wants to work every day a week on a temporary assignment that is long-term temporary, we have that available. We also have longer-term work available for our associates through assignment, whether that is general labor positions or skilled trade positions that we are able to place. ” When PeopleReady joined forces with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing pre-pandemic, it was a business-to-business relationship that could create opportunities with other IndyCar partners and teams.

It grew into a much bigger platform, however. “It was really about we could reach individuals that potentially had access to workers and associates that we could recruit to help our customers at PeopleReady and to get our brand out to help customers more broadly,” Owen said. “One of the benefits from us in partnering with IndyCar is we are their official staffing partner.

That has allowed us to provide and staff their positions that are essential to some of their races, like the Indianapolis 500. We provide event support staff like ticket takers and concession workers. “It was a really good fit in terms of our ability to help them in staffing some of their venues for their races.

” None was bigger than the Indianapolis 500, an event that drew nearly 300,000 spectators this year and needed hundreds of temporary staffers to sell concessions, scan the race tickets serve the VIPs in the many corporate hospitality suites. Some of the massive crowd in the early-morning hours of the 106th Indianapolis 500 INDYCAR Photo by Joe Skibinski “If you can imagine, they have days of practice and you don’t have as many concession stands open and ticket takers, but on race day, that number is massive,” Owen said. “We’re very fortunate to help them supply those people.

” Ironically, the first Indy 500 Race Day for PeopleReady was on August 23, 2020 – the only time the race was held without spectators because of Covid-19 restrictions. There was a happy ending for the sponsor, though. “That was our first year,” Owen said.

“We sponsored Takuma Sato and the Rahal Letterman Lanigan victory in the Indianapolis 500. It was a lot of fun in our first year of sponsorship to have our driver win the Indy 500. ” Spectators were allowed to return in limited numbers in 2020 with most tracks still having limited capacity in 2021.

But when more and more venues began to return to 100 percent capacity, PeopleReady met with IndyCar to take its program one step further. It wanted to reward the diversity of an IndyCar driver who could win on all three types of race courses. “We’ve been talking about amplifying our brand and driving excitement for PeopleReady,” Owen said.

“It has worked. It’s been very well received by the drivers and IndyCar overall. The drivers, the teams, the fans, the charities we have impacted through the challenge.

In addition to giving the $1 million prize for the first winner of all three courses, we also give a $10,000 prize. Half of that goes to charity to the winner of every race. “We’ve been able to keep the momentum going here and get some good momentum around this Force for Good Challenge and some good brand recognition for PeopleReady in the process.

” Incentives such as the Force for Good Challenge and the $1 million bonus has been a key to create additional brand awareness. Brand Awareness is Essential “It’s really important for us,” Owen said. “When individuals really need a job or want to supplement their income, PeopleReady is a good choice for them.

“Not everyone knows about it. It is important for us to amplify our brand and really have the opportunity to connect with both customers and associates so we can connect people with work. “Most companies right now are looking for help in terms of hiring people, whether that is temporary labor or full-time support that we provide with one of our other brands, PeopleScout, that has really helped us in terms of getting in front of more prospects we may be able to partner with in the future.

” The company also benefitted when one of IndyCar’s marquee names, a driver with 23 career victories and two NTT IndyCar Championships in 11 years and 172 races, claimed the big money for 2022. “Very much so,” Owen said. “We are so happy for Josef Newgarden and the charities that he chose to share his grand prize with, we are very excited about.

One is Serious Fun Children’s Network, which is a family of about 30 camps and programs that provide free recreational activities for seriously ill children and their families. “He chose to share some of it with Wags and Walks of Nashville, a non-profit organization working to reduce euthanasia in shelters and increase awareness of rescue dogs being wonderful pets. That has been fun for us to be a part of, and we are excited to be a part of the charities that he has chosen.

” PeopleReady Force for Challenge $1 million bonus winner Josef Newgarden of Team Penske after winning . . .

[+] at Road America. INDYCAR Photo by Chris Owen Follow me on Twitter . Check out my website .

Bruce Martin Editorial Standards Print Reprints & Permissions.