‘Love, Kansas’ Campaign Entices Would-be Workforce Seeking 'Boomerang' Employees to Address Workforce Shortage
Published July 31st, 2024 at 6:00 AM
Above image credit: Attendees check in for the "Love, Kansas" local kickoff hosted by the Overland Park Chamber of Commerce on July 11, 2024. Attendees were able to also grab campaign pins. (Matthew Petillo | Flatland)As Bridgette Jobe describes it, “Love, Kansas” is not just a talent recruitment campaign – it’s a full-on love letter.
“‘Love, Kansas’ is a love letter from the state to people who have moved away that says, ‘Hey take a fresh look at us because we’re maybe not the Kansas that you remember and come back home,’” Jobe said. “We have all of these abundant job opportunities, we have great quality of life, (and) our cost of living is probably less than most places in the US.”
There’s an urgent need for talent. As Flatland has previously reported, Kansas is projected to need about 34,000 more workers over the next 10 years due to college graduates leaving the state.
Jobe, the tourism director for the Kansas Department of Commerce, said that “Love, Kansas” hopes to attract what she is calling “boomerangs” – workers who leave Kansas and return later in life.
Although the focus is on boomerangs, Jobe said that the campaign is also trying to appeal to fresh college graduates in the state of Kansas by partnering with local universities. In Jobe’s mind, doing both will solve the short-term and long-term problems of attraction and retention, respectively.
“The reason we are doing that and investing in that is we want young children to fall in love with Kansas and never leave,” Jobe said. “It’s really two pronged. It is about that retention, but it is also about filling that immediate need that we have right now for new families (and) new workers to come to Kansas.”
There is no research on migration trends in Kansas, according to Donna Ginther, economics professor at the University of Kansas and the director of the Institute for Policy & Social Research. However, Ginther previously told Flatland that it’s cheaper to retain graduates rather than lure people back.
“There is a lower cost in retention than there is in recruitment,” Ginther said. “It’s hard to pick up and move, but if people are already here, they’re choosing to pick up and move, right? So we need to give (graduates) reasons to stay.”
Although Kansas has a much lower cost of living than many other states, Ginther’s analysis found that Kansas paid among the lowest wages in the region when adjusted for cost of living.
Patrick Lowry, director of marketing and communications for the Kansas Department of Commerce, said Kansas has seen three straight years of wage growth.
“67,000 jobs have been created in the last five years since Gov. (Laura) Kelly came into office,” Lowry said. “We’ve got five target sectors right now – advanced manufacturing, aerospace and defense, distribution, logistics and transportation, food and agriculture, and professional technical services. Almost 90% of the companies that we’ve recruited or helped to expand during those five years are in those sectors.”
Kansas Workforce Trends
Many states are currently running campaigns like “Love, Kansas,” but Jobe said the campaign was meant to feel very Kansas-like.
“I hear this all the time from people – we are a state that is very authentic,” Jobe said. “We are very real, and people see that when they come. So, we wanted to have something that felt like who we are as a state.”
The campaign was developed in part with feedback from private companies, according to Jobe, to learn what the needs of industries in Kansas were.
“Now that we are launched, our best way to work with them is getting the information out to potentially interested workers,” Jobe said. “Where do they need to go to find out information about the jobs that they’re at? Their factories or businesses? So that’s how we’re working with them.”
The campaign has several different methods – digital advertising, targeted material, in-person events – funded by the Kansas Legislature and local organizations. However, because of the small amount of funding, Jobe said that the campaign is strategic with ad placements.
“We are spending these dollars very targeted,” Jobe said. “We are trying to stretch them out as far as we can, but it does take money to do a campaign like this.”
One the ways that the campaign is stretching the budget, totaling $2 million, is by partnering with local organizations across the country and in Kansas.
Locally Based, Locally Focused
The first local event, hosted by the Overland Park Chamber of Commerce at DLR Group’s headquarters on July 12, served as a sort of local kickoff for the campaign.
Jobe, along with several local leaders, was at the event. Also attending were several boomerangs, like Emma Swinney, a public and media relations coordinator at Johnson County Community College.
“I’m so happy that my path kept me in Kansas,” Swinney said. “I have found, compared to my peers, that I’ve had more career growth opportunities here than my college friends who live in Washington, D.C., Chicago and New York.”
Jobe said that these local events are one of the most important parts of the campaign, simply because what every community is looking for will be different.
“That’s why it’s so grassroots driven,” Jobe said. “We don’t want to tell Overland Park or Junction City how to do this because this isn’t a cookie cutter campaign. This is a take this campaign and make it fit your community and then go out and using ‘Love, Kansas’ as a guide… Attract those people that you need for your community.”
The event had drinks, “Love, Kansas” pins, a station where attendees could write postcards to far-away friends and relatives, and many, many attendees. Representatives for U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) and U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids (D-KS) were in attendance, as well as local politicians from the Overland Park City Council.
In short, it was a big event.
Tracy Osburne Oltjen, president and CEO of the Overland Park Chamber of Commerce, said that part of the reason her organization decided to host the first local event was because her member businesses have had trouble recruiting and retaining workers.
“Our members and local businesses tell us that workforce recruitment, retention, alignment is their number one priority,” Oltjen said. “There just simply aren’t as many people in the workforce as there have been in the last 10-20 years.”
Rob Dinneen agrees. A senior physician recruiter at Children’s Mercy, Dinneen said that he has trouble finding new doctors.
“There’s just a smaller group you can ask,” Dinneen said. “It’s such a competition among physicians and there’s a physician shortage as well. Typically, it’s probably a little bit smaller town, a little bit more difficult to recruit. So, as I said, anything that increases awareness of Kansas City helps us out.”
Attendees were hopeful that the campaign would work. Kristie Vogelsberg, founder and owner of Prevention Through Nutrition, a healthcare focused company, said that she was optimistic.
“I think it’s a wonderful way to help create more awareness about the wonderful state that we have, as well as bringing people here,” Vogelsberg said. “I have two boys myself and I’m really hopeful that as they journey off, they will then come back to Kansas as well.”
William Melvin, an account executive at Everfast Fiber Networks, agreed. Melvin said that the campaign filled a gap.
“What’s your measure of success?” Melvin said. “One person moves back to the area? 100? I don’t know. I’m not moving anywhere. I love it here.”
Oltjen said that the campaign helped to amplify the strengths of Kansas and brought the voices of boomerangs front and center.
“We think that the more we make our community personal in terms of the experiences that (we) heard today, everyone has a story about why they love where they live,” Oltjen said. “Today we highlighted boomerangs, people who are from here, who went somewhere else, and all had great experiences. But something drew them back here.”
Jobe, for her part, has complete confidence in the campaign.
“Kansas is a great place to live,” Jobe said. “It’s a great place to work. It’s a great place to raise a family. I think what we have In Kansas is what people are looking for.”
Correction: Emma Swinney’s name was misspelled in an earlier version of this story.
Matthew Petillo is a Dow Jones reporting intern at Kansas City PBS/Flatland. He is a computer science and journalism student at the University of Kansas.
