FLORENCE, Ky. — Boone County has joined Kenton and Campbell counties to create NKY Works, a concentrated effort to combine the necessary resources and partners to combat Northern Kentucky's worker shortage. 

One Florence restaurant manager said she thinks her business could benefit from the partnership.

Maple Street Biscuit Company has been open for just over a year, and while customers have loved its daily fresh-baked biscuit sandwiches, the restaurant has suffered from an issue affecting many businesses nationwide. 

“We pride ourselves on (customers) getting their food quickly," said general manager Ayssha Abner. "But we’ve noticed in some of our reviews, they’ll be like, ‘Awesome food, great guest service, just (a) long wait time,' and that’s because we’re shorthanded right now."

Abner said she expects traffic to increase, and hiring enough staff can sometimes be challenging. 

"We need to be able to get people in here ... either you can’t find enough people to get in here, or they get in here, they work for a week, and they just really don’t want to work," she said. 

Maple Street has an advertisement out for a part-time restaurant manager who would earn $20 to $28 an hour, based on qualifications.

Abner said the early hours, with Maple Street being primarily a breakfast restaurant, may have something to do with its staffing challenges.

“6 a.m. is a little hard for some people to get out of bed,” she said. “You lose business when you don’t have enough people to be able to turn around and pump out the food fast enough ... the shortage hurts massively the business as a whole.”

It’s hurting other Northern Kentucky businesses, too.

Boone County Commissioner Jesse Brewer said there are 11,000 open jobs in the region, with another 5,000 to 6,000 expected to be open by 2026.

“This is an epidemic or a crisis for a lack of workforce participation,” Brewer said. “There’s a large number of folks that maybe could go to work, but they’re not going to work.”

Brewer said there are 6,000 people age 18 to 24 in the region who are not participating in the workforce. Because of these numbers, Boone County joined Kenton and Campbell counties in forming NKY Works, a consolidation of various efforts within public and private sectors to help combat the worker shortage.

“A lack of workforce is something that impacts everybody," Brewer said. "I mean, we’ve had big-name chain restaurants close here in Northern Kentucky. You call a plumber; it takes two months to get a toilet or a water heater installed. What this will do is bring everyone under one roof.”

NKY Works has identified five pillars to concentrate its efforts. Brewer laid them out as the following in a release:

• Pillar 1: Early childhood education. There is a need to advance a robust and healthy early care and education ecosystem to increase access to childcare to support Northern Kentucky's workforce because if workers do not have adequate care for their children, it’s hard to get them to come to work.
• Pillar 2: Career Readiness. Align and communicate community resources to provide meaningful opportunities for exposure, exploration and experience in high-demand and foundational workforce sectors. This will be getting to our youth that are deciding a career or educational path and showing them that there may be opportunities to explore things they will love and have a passion for that will make a difference right here at home without all the burden of the large college debt. College may not be the right choice for everyone; however, each young person deserves an opportunity to have a fulfilling career path for themselves and our community.
• Pillar 3: Work-ready adults. We need to leverage our regional education, training and support services toward adult work readiness with special attention to underserved individuals.
• Pillar 4: Talent attraction and retention. Improve the region's ability to attract and retain qualified workers. We need to help keep our young people from leaving our region for opportunities and provide them with equal or better opportunities right here in their own backyard. 
• Pillar 5: Employer policies and practices. We need to assist the region’s employers with attracting, retaining, developing and advancing their employees.

NKY Works will have a committee that oversees each of the identified pillars and initiatives to collaborate its focus and help combat the worker shortage.  

The idea is to more efficiently deliver the best resources available to people who want to work but may not know what’s available for them.

“Something like that would definitely help us out and would save us a lot of trouble of actually trying to assemble a job fair just for ourselves ... that would literally be a lifesaver for us," Abner said.