Alternative Job Brokering: Overcoming Barriers to Work

The Center for Social Policy marks the release of a report of the National Study of Alternative Staffing Services, entitled Alternative Job Brokering: Addressing Labor Market Disadvantages, Improving the Temp Experience, and Enhancing Job Opportunities. This two-year study, sponsored by the Ford Foundation, analyzes an emerging sector of non-profits and community based organizations that use the temporary staffing business model to place workers with disadvantages into quality jobs. Panelists discuss the study which cites that many agencies are able to successfully place workers in temporary jobs and help them to secure permanent positions. By using a social enterprise model, these agencies also generate revenues to offset the costs of placing workers and supervising them. Alternative staffing services may even have a competitive edge over conventional staffing services, since the extra support they provide clients on assignment and their follow-up with the businesses is viewed as exceptional customer service.

Jo Ann Gora

Gora is Indiana's representative to the American Association of State Colleges and Universities board and is one of the 57 presidents and chancellors on The New York Times/Chronicle of Higher Education higher education cabinet. She chairs the Mid-American Conference Presidents' Council and co-chairs the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership, where she previously chaired the governance committee. She serves on the boards of First Merchants Bank, Ball Memorial Hospital, and the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, where she co-chairs the Business-Higher Education Forum. Gora was named one of 2007's most influential women in Indiana by the Indianapolis Business Journal and one of 15 Women of Wonder in the spring 2008 issue of Indiana Minority Business Magazine. In 2005, she received a Torchbearer Award from the Indiana Commission for Women for her commitment to higher education. The award is the highest honor given by the state of Indiana to Hoosier women who have overcome or removed barriers to equality or whose achievements have contributed to making the state a better place in which to live, work or raise a family. She also received a Sagamore of the Wabash, Indiana's highest civilian honor, in 2005. In 2008, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Yeungnam University in South Korea. Gora came to Ball State from the University of Massachusetts Boston, where she had been chancellor since 2001. Previously, she served for nine years as provost and vice president for academic affairs at Old Dominion University in Virginia. She earned her bachelor