VIDALIA — The Miss-Lou has a workforce that is educated, skilled and yet, still missing something.

“We in Adams County have a higher high school and college graduation rate than the state average,” Natchez Win Job Center Branch Manager Peggy Ballard said. “That leads me to believe we have people who have the skills. The problem we see, though, is that they don’t have the ‘wide world of work,’ skills.”

Some of the wide world of work skills include simple things like being able to work with others or communicate effectively, Ballard said.

“We see issues with not being able to work through issues when they get a job, people who don’t know how to work with a co-worker or a manager they can’t get along with,” Ballard said.

But the workforce also has problems with a basic work ethic, Concordia Economic Director Heather Malone said.

“It’s things like being tardy for work and not caring,” Malone said.

That’s something Walmart Manager Lionel Stepter said he has seen first hand.

“I think a lot of (people) forget this is not the outside world, this is the business world,” he said. “I’m at work, I get paid for this job and I need to do it as professionally as possible. I think some of them forget that or don’t know.”

And then there’s drugs.

“At any skill level we can’t find enough people to pass a drug test to stay in on these jobs,” Malone said. “I have heard horror stories where (management) tells (workers), ‘This is a scheduled drug test,’ and they still fail it.”

But Stepter said — at least for Walmart — that’s beginning to be a waning problem.

“We drug test and do background checks, as well,” Stepter said. “It’s not as bad as it used to be. (Maybe) we’re not getting many applicants who are doing drugs.”

Or people know Walmart conducts drug screening and steer clear, he said.

Some workforce issues are slightly more complex, however.

“We see — in a lot of the jobs in this community that are part-time, minimum wage — it is very difficult for people to remain in these jobs if they have transportation or childcare issues,” Ballard said. “They get a job, and they think they have these things lined up, but three weeks later (the arrangements have) fallen apart.”

That may be because the relative or friend who has been providing transportation just gets tired of doing it, or their vehicle breaks down, Ballard said.

Likewise, the person who is providing childcare for the worker may be unable to continue doing it or decide they don’t want to anymore, and because the worker is in a minimum wage job, they can’t afford childcare, she said.

“Basically, they have no support system,” she said.

Natchez Eola General Manager Ron Brumfield said the hotel tries to address that problem on the front end.

“We know up front, ‘Do you have reliable transportation, someone who keeps your children?’” Brumfield said.

He said the more frequent problem with childcare is that day care employees will tell parents that, for any number of reasons, they cannot take their children that day.

“It’s not that great of a problem, you learn to deal with it,” Brumfield said.

A greater problem Stepter said he has faced is transitory issues that stem from Natchez being a small city.

“A lot of people are leaving Natchez and are going to other places,” he said. “For us, it’s difficult to find good, consistent, reliable and dependable workers.”

And while he said there are such workers in the Miss-Lou, they’ve already been snatched up.

“It makes it difficult to attract good, solid performers because most of the good, solid performers are already working or already on good jobs and have been on those jobs for awhile.”

Brumfield said he has also experienced the same transitory nature in his employing experiences.

“I do see a lot of the new hires don’t stay here long,” Brumfield said. “We’ve always tried to put our finger on that.

“There seems to always be a better opportunity in larger cities and Natchez is so small.”

He said this is prevalent in younger employees, or employees who have come from more metropolitan areas.

“There are quite a lot of people who miss the big city life coming from Houston, Dallas, Atlanta,” Brumfield said. “I hear that quite often — especially the younger ones — a lot of younger ones, in their words, ‘There is nothing for them here.’”

But not all is bad, by a long shot.

Brumfield said that, while he sees a lot of workers leave, he’s also seen a lot of long-term, dedicated employees.

“I’ve got people here who have been here 30-some years. On the whole, at least 90 to 95 percent of the employees here have been here long term,” he said. “I’ve got longevity in every department.”

Malone said she believes that is in part because people who live in the Miss-Lou are loyal to the area, a sentiment Ballard echoed.

“When International Paper closed, we had so many people who wanted to stay in the area to work, even if that meant lower wages,” Ballard said. “I think in that same way they might be loyal to a business.”

Likewise, Ballard said she has seen numerous workers who were skilled in one area take initiative to learn new skills in another area, whether to supplement their existing income or to create a new one when jobs weren’t readily available.

“The people in general in our area have a huge entrepreneurial spirit,” Malone said. “We may not have had a lot of opportunities with large businesses, but people have always been able to find a way to make a living and stay here.”

With those positives in mind, Malone said it is important to start training future workers about the work world, be it about good work ethics or communication skills, fairly early.

“Maybe we need to start some kind of work skills training at the junior high level,” Malone said.

Skill sets, applying for jobs, interviewing and work ethics are all things Stepter said he thinks needs to be included in a comprehensive training program.

“I just feel we need better programs out there to teach them jobs — not just jobs in Walmart, but jobs anywhere,” he said.

AJFC Executive Director Lamar Braxton said those kinds of workforce issues are a trend in the area, and the agency is working to combat them.

Using a $950,000 Community Services Block Grant, AJFC will be acting as a liaison between the public and local colleges, high schools and university to place people in need of training in programs already going on.

“We will identify them, counsel them and convince them to go wherever they need to go to improve their situation,” he said. “We would only hopefully enhance programs that are already doing training by populating these programs.”