Grounding the Workplace Through Character and Values
- Dan Charney & Alan Ross
- Jun 20, 2022
- 3 min read
Written by Guest Contributors Dan Charney & Alan Ross

Team NEO has reported that the number one issue among employers is finding and retaining employees. Even before the Great Resignation, employers were having difficulty filling open positions. In the wake of COVID-19, amid dropping unemployment and a robust economy, this predicament is even greater. To address this situation, to its credit, the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, in collaboration with dozens of companies and nonprofits, launched the Greater Cleveland Career Consortium. We are proud to be a part of this collaboration to match students with career pathways -- pointing them toward meaningful careers and productive lives.
But there are employees and there are employees. Not every potential employee has the work ethic, collaboration or relationship skills, and ethical core that are important to employers. HR professionals tell us that, while they can train for the technical elements of the job, they have difficulty training for character and values. CEOs who hire for their executive teams admit that, while they may hire for competence, they often fire for character. Character matters, because individual character and values can either align with a company’s culture or torpedo it.
Workforce analyses have acknowledged this character need. A recent McKinsey & Company Global Workforce Study concluded that, “The results (of surveys) also point to a shift in the most important skills to develop, which tend to be social and emotional in nature: for example empathy, leadership, and adaptability.”
For years, companies that rely on entry-level workers have reported difficulty with employee social-emotional, character and values issues. Neighborly, Inc., a large franchise organization with 16 household brands, noted that they were going through ten hires to find one “keeper,” defined as an employee who stays on the job for a year.
That is why Direct Recruiters, Inc., a global recruiting firm based in Solon, and Values-in-Action Foundation, a Mayfield-based character-building and workforce training organization, have teamed up to form Direct Community Impact, a fee-based employee placement company that finds, trains and places underserved, entry-level employees.
This novel collaboration is an extension of Values-in-Action’s “VIA: How You Get There” Workforce Training, which trains hundreds of students in Northeast Ohio public high schools with character, values and soft-skills needed to get and retain well-paying jobs.
In 2013, the Ohio Department of Education and the Ohio Board of Regents approached Values-in-Action and asked it to develop a values-and-character-based, soft-skills curriculum and training for high school juniors and seniors looking to directly enter the workforce. The state was interested because Values-in-Action had an impressive track-record of training the most at-risk underserved girls to graduate high school and perform well. Third party data showed that, where Values-in-Action’s Project Love and Believe to Achieve programs trained students, conditions for learning (a metric used by CMSD) increased 16%, and 85% of the most at-risk girls graduated, with close to zero pregnancies (which often interfered with both graduation and employment) within the graduating cohort.
The state paired Values-in-Action with Auburn Career Center, the oldest and largest of the Ohio career centers, to co-develop and pilot the workforce program. The model was piloted during a year-long effort at Auburn which included mentors and participants from Lubrizol, Kennametal, Gold Key Manufacturing, Jergens, Cleveland Clinic, Progressive, Torque Transmission, Lake County YMCA, Marous Brothers and Swagelok. Several VIA-trained students were then placed with the participating employers with excellent results. Swagelok reported that they noticed a distinct difference in attitude, collaboration, character, and values from the VIA graduates that they hired.
One of the main elements of the 16-week program is mentorship. Corporate mentors meet with students every three weeks during presentations the students make about real-life workplace scenarios. In the final session, students present their own mock company, complete with core-values, products, employee relations and community involvement.
For several years, Direct Recruiters has provided mentors to the VIA program. Seeing a need for placing the values-centered students with values-centered companies, Values-in-Action and Direct Recruiters developed Direct Community Impact. This combined effort is now ready and able to fill employers’ talent pipelines with character-based entry level employees.
VIA means “through.” We believe that, through a character and values approach, companies can find qualified employees who will become “keepers.”
Dan Charney is President and CEO of Direct Recruiters, Inc.; Alan Ross, a longtime management-side labor lawyer, is Board Chair of Values-in-Action Foundation. For more information on how to access values-based employees, contact Nya Brooks at nyab@viafdn.org.
မကြာသေးခင်ကမှ သူငယ်ချင်းတစ်ယောက်က Betongame ဒါကိုနှိပ်ပါ။ ဆိုတာကို မိတ်ဆက်ပေးခဲ့တယ်။ မနက်ဖြန်ပဲ စမ်းသုံးလိုက်တော့ တကယ်ကိုမျှော်လင့်ထားသလောက်ထက်ပိုပြီး စိတ်ချမ်းသာမှုရခဲ့တယ်။ ကျွန်တော်ဟာ football fan ဖြစ်တဲ့အတွက် Premier League, La Liga တို့မှာ bet လုပ်တတ်ပါတယ်။ Betongame မှာတော့ အားကစားအမျိုးအစားနောက်ကျောမပေးဘဲ market အများကြီးရှိတယ်။ ဒီတစ်ခါ UEFA ရဲ့ match မှာတောင် live odds ကို အချိန်နဲ့တပြေးညီ စောင့်ကြည့်ပြီးဘက်ထောင်လို့ရတဲ့အတွက် ပိုအဆင်ပြေတာပါ။ အရင်ကပြုလုပ်ထားတဲ့ site တချို့ကလည်း မတရားတာတွေ ရှိလို့စိတ်မသန်ဘူး။ ဒီ site ကတော့ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံရဲ့တရားဝင် platform ဖြစ်လို့ တကယ်ပြောရမယ်ဆိုရင် စိတ်အေးအေးနဲ့ရင်းနှီးလို့ရပါတယ်။ အခုချိန်မှာမိတ်ဆွေတို့အတွက်လည်း စမ်းကြည့်ဖို့ဖိတ်ခေါ်ချင်ပါတယ်
Semua yang kamu cari, ada di Bagas31.
April 2025 has brought some real game-changers in the world of betting apps in Bangladesh. I recently explored look here and it’s the most comprehensive resource I’ve seen so far. The page covers everything — from supported payment systems to app speed and bonus offers. I’m on iOS and was worried about compatibility, but this guide helped me find a smooth-running app that actually supports BDT and accepts Nagad and bKash. It’s now my go-to app, and I highly recommend checking this site if you’re tired of testing random apps.
If you are looking for an online casino that combines excitement, great rewards, and a user-friendly experience, look no further than continue here Casino BDBet. In my experience, it stands out as the best online casino in Bangladesh for April 2025, and here's why.
First, Casino BDBet offers an incredibly diverse range of games. Whether you are into classic table games like blackjack and roulette, or if you're a slots enthusiast, this casino has you covered. They feature high-quality games from renowned software providers, ensuring smooth gameplay and immersive graphics that rival land-based casinos. What I appreciate most is the constant update of games, bringing in new titles to keep the experience fresh.
Another reason why I recommend Casino BDBet is their…
Scare yourself for free with paid indie horror games!