The Covid-19 pandemic has affected every facet of our economy, increasing a cultural reliance on e-commerce that is here to stay. Retailers have responded by minimizing square footage of brick-and-mortar store fronts, keeping less inventory on site, and focusing more on entertainment and experiential retail to keep shoppers engaged. As a result, the need for warehousing and industrial space has exploded, driving the desire for large-scale, innovative facilities that maximize efficiency and logistical operations.
The literal driving force behind the industrial surge is the expansion of transportation capabilities worldwide, with international trade becoming the engine of the global economy. Goods ar...
It’s been incredibly interesting to watch just how the world has responded to the Covid-19 crisis. Some businesses and individuals didn’t seem to respond or pivot at all, but a select group of companies figured out how to not only stay afloat, but also thrive in the midst of this pandemic.
These companies, the successful amidst the chaos, act as a compelling case study for many economists around the globe (since this is truly all unprecedented), and for myself. I’ve been looking at the companies that have actually grown during Covid-19, and I dug into just how they’ve been able to do it. Hopefully, this insight wil...
The pandemic wreaked havoc across every industry, and companies in the manufacturing and mobility/transportation sectors were not spared. The result? Companies are re-evaluating their supply chains and operations in a post-COVID environment.
Realigning the Supply Chain
For the past 20 years, manufacturing moved operations from the U.S. to East Asia to take advantage of cheap labor. This approach dominated manufacturers’ strategy, paving the way for a status quo where low-skilled and large-scale manufacturing was done in China. But COVID-19 — coupled with rising wages in East Asia, trade tensions, and a tariff war between the U.S. and China — undermined the busines...
Access to education, health care, public safety and government services increasingly depends on access to affordable, high-speed internet service. It provides small-business owners with access to resources and markets around the world, allows students the opportunity to participate in remote education and connects patients in medically underserved areas to critical health services. The COVID-19 pandemic further underscored the importance of that internet access.
Available data from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) suggest that Kansas residents, especially in rural communities, lack access to stable, high-speed internet service at home. At the same time, current FCC regulations on broadband measurement and reporting limi...
Junction City/Geary County Kansas is now benefiting from reliable, high-performance fiber broadband thanks to Twin Valley Communications, a 4th-generation family-owned provider of gigabit broadband, fixed wireless, and IT managed services. This innovation was made possible by SPARK funding from CARES Act grants, matching investments from Twin Valley, and proactive thinking by Junction City leadership.
The project is being conducted in two phases. Due to requirements of the SPARK funding received September 2020, Phase 1 had to be completed by December 31, 2020. Had the city not voted in November 2019 to install a conduit system and fiber-optic network to connect th...
Geary Community Hospital (GCH) has been providing quality healthcare and promoting the well-being of the community it serves since it opened in 1913 in a large old home on the southwest corner of Second and Adams Streets.
Since opening, GCH has relocated, transformed, and expanded several times, but has always remained focused on its vision to be the trusted choice for the community’s healthcare and wellness. In 1966, the current facility was completed, funded in part by $1.1 million federal matching grants that hinged on the promise to provide charity care to the indigent for the next 20 years. Although th...
The following excerpt is from Caroline Stokes’s book Elephants Before Unicorns. Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Apple Books | IndieBound or click here to buy it directly from us and SAVE 60% on this book when you use code CAREER2021 through 4/17/21.
I’d like to introduce you to three technologies that will help people leaders discover talent and fuel your teams’ evolution to avoid dinosaur syndrome (falling behind in terms of the skill and functionality of your teams). Let’s walk briefly through each of them.
Bias Avoidance Talent Matching
The first tool is SquarePeg, a matching service for job seekers and employers that uses online assessments to measure a candidate’s aptitude, preferences and character traits, and determine whic...
The following excerpt is from Dr. Nadine Greiner’s book Stress-Less Leadership. Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Apple Books | IndieBound or click here to buy it directly from us and SAVE 60% on this book when you use code LEAD2021 through 4/10/21.
It can be hard to concentrate. Even on your best days, you're surrounded by distractions. When you struggle to concentrate, you can’t focus on what needs to be done, you waste time and you stress yourself out. It’s time to review some solutions.
Lay out the work and stick to it
When you embark on a task without a plan, it’s like going on a road trip without a map. You need to know where you’re headed. A ke...
Two years ago, Nick Poels decided he wanted K-12 students in his rural Kansas community of 2,500 to learn to code. Kids in Phillipsburg soon had a brand-new computer lab, and Poels hoped 20 or 30 children might use it.
"Within two weeks of school starting, we had 351 students involved," he said.
Poels quickly realized he had touched on something.
At the time he was the economic development director for Phillips County, in north-central Kansas. Now he's working with nonprofit NetWork Kansas on a new project to bring computer science education to K-12 schools across the state, with support from the Kansa...
Will the 2020 Corporate Survey provide us with insight into the needs and priorities of companies and developers, or will the effects of the pandemic and global trade tensions have created a focus on location factors relevant to a temporary business climate that most of us hope will return to a more familiar environment?
My crystal ball is as good as the next pundit’s, but in speaking with clients, in reviewing responses in the 2020 Corporate Survey, and in interpreting current events and investment trends, my view is that those organizations that have adapted to new ways of working, solving problems...
When she was elected, Governor Kelly promised to be “the education Governor.” Since the start of her administration, she’s made good on that commitment by increasing funding for public schools and working to align education with business needs.
On January 24, 2019, Governor Kelly issued Executive Order 19-03 creating the Governor’s Council on Education. The Council’s overall charge is to increase prosperity and well-being for Kansans by providing quality education from early learning through post-secondary attainment.
Late last year, the Council presented a set of policy recommendations focused on greater collaboration between businesses, workforce training programs and educators, along with enhanced access to a high-quality education fo...
The Corporate Survey results reflect the current situation. The pandemic has not changed the corporate real estate strategy of many companies (confirmed by 76 percent) to go forward with domestic and international investments, but it has slowed it down. For example, travel restrictions still limit the possibility of foreign companies to visit possible sites in the U.S. Nevertheless, several new projects have started including FDI ones. As the survey shows, reshoring, near-shoring, and offshoring seem not to be happening. Companies are also tending to do more geographical diversification of their plants and expanding existing facilities. We are already seeing larg...
Communities are the heart of Kansas. So, when it comes to growing the economy, community development is central to our approach.
One of the first priorities companies consider when deciding where to locate is whether their employees will be able to live happily and comfortably. When it comes to Kansas, we know they can and will.
See the original source here.
MANHATTAN — The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC, has funded a new Nuclear Engineering Fellowship Program to provide financial support and mentoring to at least three Kansas State University nuclear engineering doctoral students.
Students selected for the four-year, $400,000 program — under the direction of Amir Bahadori, associate professor and Steve Hsu Keystone research scholar in the Alan Levin Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering — will perform research in areas of interest to the NRC.
Collaborators on the project — all K-State associate professors of mechanical and nuclear engineering and Steve Hsu Keystone research scholars — include Walter McNeil, Jeremy Roberts an...
The following excerpt is from Kanika Tolver’s book Career Rehab. Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iTunes or click here to buy it directly from us and SAVE 60% on this book when you use code CAREER2021 through 4/17/21.
One of the most important phases of your career rehab journey is creating your Rehab YOU career blueprint. Become the architect of your career by considering your desired career path, location, salary, scope, organization type, benefits and perks and mentors. You’ll start to feel more confident in your career renovations as you craft your vision of your dream career. Here’s how to get started:
1. Be a brand, not an employee
Most employees don’t see themselve...
Being inquisitive about data is essential for any web-based business. How are you going to operate a website without knowing how people are actually using it? That's why Google Analytics is so crucial for any business running a website. It will give you the insights you need to make better decisions about your content, web optimization, SEO, and more. This free tool is preferred by millions worldwide as a simple way to understand their web traffic and make improvements to their websites. If you're ready to learn GA, The Google Analytics Master Class Bundle is a great place to start.
This five-course bundle comprises 12 hour...
You might think that creativity requires the antithesis of rules and regulation. Even the thought of being creative conjures up images of disorder. Messy rooms, paint everywhere, scraps of paper with ideas scrawled across them. The frantic creative genius works away, oblivious to the world around them. Chaos. Method in madness. Flashes of brilliance among a cluttered existence.
The best entrepreneurs are creative. They need to find ways of solving old and new problems. They picture a world that doesn’t yet exist, they bring products to life using only their imagination. They think of ways to move forward, grow bigger an...
As we were ringing in 2020, it’s safe to say that almost no one could have imagined the novel year that was virtually at our doorsteps. Like a monsoon, Covid-19 arrived, and with it a plethora of changes to not only how we live and work, but how business is conducted.
Quarantines and lockdowns became a way of life, forcing companies to transform how they operate. Office staff, sales reps, and others who were considered non-essential workers began working from home. In-person meetings and sales calls became a thing of the past, replaced by collaboration tools to boost the efficiency o...
The coronavirus pandemic plunged the world into a deep health and economic crisis. The rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine points to a “light at the end of the tunnel” for the country’s physical health, but as we collectively take stock for ways to rebuild our economy stronger and more resilient than before, we need to remember what works. Entrepreneurism has been, and will continue to be, a driver of long-term economic growth.
The economic free fall brought about by the coronavirus was unexpected and unprecedented. Experts are still attempting to fully understand, quantify, and predict the full extent of the fallout...
AD: How has COVID-19 changed the employee experience in manufacturing, and what facets of this should organizations retain going forward?
Zenk: Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, employees have been experiencing a drastically different work environment. Thousands of manufacturers across the U.S. and around the world were deemed essential during the pandemic, and their production lines haven’t stopped. They’ve continued to produce essential goods that the global community relies on — from the food we eat to the clothes we wear and cleaning supplies we use in our homes. As some manufacturers increased output and others reconfigured operations to satisfy urgent demands...
Back in the 1980s, the term “offshoring” became a business buzzword as more and more U.S. companies moved manufacturing to foreign countries, typically to save on labor costs. In recent years, “reshoring” has been added to the lexicon as companies decide to bring manufacturing back to the U.S., for various reasons.
In 2020, reshoring created more U.S. jobs than foreign direct investment (FDI) for the first time in seven years, according to data collected by the Reshoring Initiative. In 2020, U.S. companies reshored nearly 69,000 manufacturing positions, while greenfield investment in the same industries created fewer than 42,000 jobs, according to the Initiative...
The stratospheric rise of the cloud over the past few years caught many off guard and created an arms race among the cloud providers, with data center development underpinning the effort.
These cloud providers were anticipating ever-increasing demand for the cloud by globally creating a robust and redundant network of massive data centers tethered together through a network of smaller data centers and fiber connection locations. Data centers that service other segments of the market (wholesale colocation, “edge,” and retail) were also riding the wave of increased demand. Little did we know a global pandemic would make data centers and th...
Judging by the number of e-commerce and health-related facility investments all around us in this pandemic year, you’d expect those categories to vault to the top of any global ranking by industry sector.
They didn’t quite reach the summit, but logistics (+19.3%) and life sciences (+12%) show the biggest — and only — growth rates among the Top Industries of 2020, as judged by the number of projects tracked by NAICS code in the Conway Data Analytics Database. The database since the 1980s has tracked facility investments by corporate end users across all world geographies and all industry sectors.
Life sciences rise...
As entrepreneurs we tend to spend many hours at work, however, this may not be the most beneficial for your health or even for your cognitive development.
According to a study published by the Melbourne Institute Worker Paper , spending only 25 hours at work a week, that is, three days, could be the healthiest, especially if you are over 40 years old.
According to Australian researchers , who analyzed 3,000 men and 3,000 women, working more than 55 hours a week produces fatigue, stress, affects neural processes and atrophy cognitive functions. That is, reducing work time to 25 hours for every seven days improves memory, abstract reasonin...
Because of its support of Fort Riley, Junction City, Kansas was named a Great American Defense Community in 2020. This award celebrates communities with an exceptional commitment to improving the lives of service members, veterans, and their families.
“Only five communities are selected annually to receive the Great American Defense Community Award amongst all military installations in the U.S., not just the Army, so it is very select company,” said Craig Bender, Military Affairs Council Director.
Defense communities are the towns, cities, counties, regions, and states that serve as home to the nation’s military installations and industrial partners. In some cases, ther...
Core technology jobs are weathering the pandemic better than many other occupations as demand stays strong for tech services and products that support social distancing and basic business and societal functions. This bodes well for tech hotspots across North America.
The tech industry already is a pillar of the U.S. economy. In the past five years, one of every four new office-space-using jobs created were in the technology industry. That influence extends to commercial real estate: Tech companies in this year’s second quarter accounted for 20.5% of office leasing activity in the U.S., more than any other industry.
The pandemic has pause...
Of course, the big factor impacting office and industrial parks going into 2021 is COVID-19. The pandemic has reduced business production and workforce (through illness, social distancing, and remote working), disrupted the supply chain and cash flow, and brought about significant investments in technology.
Across the nation, the demand for suburban office parks is rising as more skilled workers move back to suburbs, due to concerns about housing costs and quality of education — they also feel safer from COVID-19 and the civil unrest that is happening in some larger cities.
“The most notable shift is toward lower-intensity spaces, where getting int...
TOPEKA – Kansas had the most dramatic jump in economic development success of any state in the country in 2020, according to Site Selection magazine.
With 70 projects meeting the magazine’s criteria, Kansas ranked 10th in the nation in economic development projects per capita in 2020. The new ranking increased from 2019 when Kansas was ranked No. 20.
“Our latest Site Selection ranking proves what we already know: Kansas is on the right track to continue strengthening our economy,” said Governor Laura Kelly. “More businesses means more, higher-paying jobs for Kansans. As our economy continues to recover from COVID-19, our ability to attrac...
If you're marketing your products or services online, good copywriting is a must. Quality copywriting can be the difference between someone deciding your product isn't worth the trouble or that it's the most important thing they've ever needed in their life. It's all about perspective, and copywriting helps people get into the right perspective.
It's easy to outsource your copywriting needs, but that can get expensive quickly. If you're cutting costs and want to manage your copywriting yourself, learn how to do it properly in The Premium Digital Copywriting Training Bundle.
This five-course bundle features training from experts like Derek Franklin (4.5/5 instructor rating), Alan Sharpe (4.5/...
It can be easy to put team-building activities on the back burner these days. Who wants to schedule another video call? However, it’s a leader’s job to ensure the team is engaged and functioning well. And if you’re not making time for team building, you’re actually making your team less productive.
Although employee performance optimization — improvement of an individual’s own skill set — is important for personal growth, studies have shown that individual expertise is not what ultimately makes teams and companies more competitive and innovative. As clichéd as it sounds, teamwork really is what makes the dream work. Google’s well-known research into tea...
Every business needs a way to tell its customers about its products and services. Those marketing channels differ from one business to another and can change as the business grows. And just like everything else in business, marketing needs an investment. In the earliest stages of a startup, this investment is usually best spent developing a product customers need.
Imagine that you have just developed two brand new products. Product one has great signs of possible product-market fit based on customer interviews and the validation experiments data. Yet, you have no marketing budget for it. Product two is not validated at all, but you hav...
Resilience is the capacity to bounce back from difficult events, and if there’s one group who needs that ability, it’s entrepreneurs. Without resilience, every lost client feels like a catastrophe. Failure seems like a point of no return, despite being a normal, if unpleasant, outcome of starting a business.
Resilience, however, is not all or none. Some entrepreneurs are better at picking themselves up and pivoting than others. What separates people who thrive in stressful times from those who break down when faced with adversity?
Research by Vassar College Department of Psychology's Michele M. Tugade from 2004 suggests that resilient people experience positive emotions mor...
The world as we all knew it changed earlier this year with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Seemingly overnight, everything that we used to think was normal had changed, and things that once were deemed impossible for the workplace became the “new normal.” Now, seven months later, most of us have gotten used to this “new normal” — embracing the work-from-home lifestyle, using new technology, wearing masks, social distancing, and connecting virtually. But what comes next? Eventually this pandemic will end, a vaccine will be readily available, and we will attempt to return back to our “normal” lives. Bu...
Junction City, Kansas has a business-friendly climate and exceptional access to higher education. Add that to its prime location along I-70 in the center of the nation, and you have a formula for entrepreneurial and business success.
LaDonna Junghans of LaDonna Junghans State Farm Insurance Agency is a prime example of Junction City’s spirit of success. Junghans has been serving the community as a State Farm agent since 1991.
Junghans, a Kansas State University graduate, credits her career development to jobs that allowed her to work closely with customers. She worked as an administrative assistant with a financial institution president, and the...
You know you need remote workers, now let's talk about how to attract remote workers to your community. REMOTE WORKERS bring an abundance of advantages to a local workforce, from growing the tax base to diversifying the labor pool. As remote work continues to grow, more communities will benefit from adding remote workers to their local workforce.
WAYS TO ATTRACT REMOTE WORKERS TO YOUR COMMUNITY
REMOTE WORK IS THE NEW NORM
Nearly two-thirds of U.S. workers who have been working remotely during the pandemic want to continue to work from home, according to a GALLUP POLL.
Between April and May 2020, the number of remote workers in the U.S. doubled, GALLUP REPORTS...
There is not a day that goes by where we don’t talk about the COVID pandemic. It is on the news, in our social feeds and it has infiltrated both our personal and professional worlds. Many businesses have shifted employees to a work-from-home routine; changing everything about how the business day works. We’ve moved from in-person to video. We’ve adapted to multiple family members attempting to be productive, in the same space, at the same time and we’ve shifted from brick-and-mortar to a heavier online presence. In the midst of it all, there have been many success stories. Yet, the challenges are ever apparent...
Have you ever seen one of those 50-page business plans that go into detail about every conceivable aspect of a still purely theoretical business? You probably have, since those business plans have been the industry standard for decades.
Yet, in a world where words like lean and agile are becoming the new norm for startups, 50-page business plans look a bit out of place, and with a good reason.
It’s a fact that creating a plan is very helpful for a new business. A study of more than 10 thousand businesses shows that ventures grow 30% faster on average if they create business plans.
Read full article.
If you’re like most professionals, you spent a lot of time in virtual meetings in 2020 and will in 2021 — more than you ever thought possible in, say, 2015. And if you’re like most professionals meeting virtually, you’ve lamented the fact that they could be better.
Virtual meetings suffer many of the same drawbacks as traditional meetings, including poor organization, bloated time slots and disinterested attendees. But they also suffer from a batch of problems uniquely their own, including intermittent delays, connectivity issues and the dreaded patterns of ongoing interruptions.
And of course, virtual meetings aren’t going anywhere. Many businesses that transitioned t...
Given the uncertainty businesses face in 2021 as the COVID-19 pandemic continues, company leaders are looking at every phase of their operation to determine ways they can improve.
Workplace culture is one area commanding attention. As the virus caused business limitations and forced many companies to go fully remote in 2020, workplace culture was challenged in new ways. This was a reminder to company leaders to make this a priority, forcing them to find ways to strengthen it in the new year, says Mark McClain, CEO and co-founder of SailPoint and the ForbesBooks author of Joy and Success at Work: Building Organizations that Don’t Suck (th...
Many would-be entrepreneurs spend a lot of time trying to think of the next big thing. Most end up spinning their wheels and never getting a new venture off the ground. It’s hard to come up with an original business idea. However, if you look at some of the most successful businesses in the world, you'll find that they aren't based on new ideas at all.
The truth is that you don't have to be original to start a successful business. Many startups succeed in crowded markets by doing their homework and executing their business plans. Nerd Wallet, for example, succeeded amon...
Further assistance for businesses is now available — the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has reopened the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). On December 27, 2020, the Economic Aid Act became law and extended the authority to make PPP loans through March 31, 2021. With an official title of the Economic Aid to Hard-Hit Small Businesses, Non-Profits, and Venues Act, the Economic Aid Act is part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021. This $325 billion title would provide additional assistance to the hardest-hit small businesses, nonprofits, and venues that are struggling to recover from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic...
WATCO is a Kansas-based single-source transportation and supply chain services company with locations throughout North America and Australia. Founded in 1983, they grew from one locomotive into what they are today: a leading company that offers its customers water, rail, road and air transportation, material handling and storage, repair and maintenance, logistics, and design and development. They own and operate a diverse and unmatched network of short line railroads, terminals, ports, and mechanical shops. Junction City, Kansas is home to one of their railcar repair shops.
“Customers send us their railcars so we can fix them up to ‘track ready’ accordin...
AD: Can you define people analytics for our readers?
Williams: People analytics is described as the method of analytics which can support leaders as they make decisions about their employees and workforce. This method applies statistics, technology, and expertise to large sets of HR data, which should result in better business and management decisions by an organization. Another way of looking at this is how to get the best return on investment from their people — in an analytical, data-driven way.
AD: How can the use of data help industrial companies satisfy their workforce requirements?
Williams: Data can prove instrumental to inform industrial companies on the bes...
AD: How has COVID-19 changed the employee experience in manufacturing, and what facets of this should organizations retain going forward?
Zenk: Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, employees have been experiencing a drastically different work environment. Thousands of manufacturers across the U.S. and around the world were deemed essential during the pandemic, and their production lines haven’t stopped. They’ve continued to produce essential goods that the global community relies on — from the food we eat to the clothes we wear and cleaning supplies we use in our homes. As some manufacturers increased output and others reconfigured operations to satisfy urgent demands...
The world as we all knew it changed earlier this year with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Seemingly overnight, everything that we used to think was normal had changed, and things that once were deemed impossible for the workplace became the “new normal.” Now, seven months later, most of us have gotten used to this “new normal” — embracing the work-from-home lifestyle, using new technology, wearing masks, social distancing, and connecting virtually. But what comes next? Eventually this pandemic will end, a vaccine will be readily available, and we will attempt to return back to our “normal” lives. Bu...
Of course, the big factor impacting office and industrial parks going into 2021 is COVID-19. The pandemic has reduced business production and workforce (through illness, social distancing, and remote working), disrupted the supply chain and cash flow, and brought about significant investments in technology.
Across the nation, the demand for suburban office parks is rising as more skilled workers move back to suburbs, due to concerns about housing costs and quality of education — they also feel safer from COVID-19 and the civil unrest that is happening in some larger cities.
“The most notable shift is toward lower-intensity spaces, where getting int...
While the COVID-19 pandemic continues to accelerate consumer and workplace trends that were, in many cases, already under way pre-pandemic, challenges and opportunities in finding, training, and retaining an efficient industrial workforce remain constants for distributors and manufacturers. Effective site selection decisions hinge on a complex cost/quality balance of labor, logistics, and location. It is critical that occupiers remain vigilant in fostering a workplace and workforce that delivers on performance objectives while meeting current and future pandemic-driven challenges. With labor costs making up as much as 70 percent of warehouse operating expenses, the focus on workforce potential in existing an...
Kansas State University, a world-class research institution, is 20 minutes away.
Connected
Five exits off I-70 and an abundance of affordable sites for development.
Natural Beauty
Home to the largest lake in Kansas with 163 miles of shoreline.
2020 Great American Defense Community
This is a national level award that is only given to five communities per year across the entire United States after a tough competition between applicants. This award demonstrates the continuous dedication that Junction City shows in its support of Fort Riley and the 1st Infantry Division.
Connected
An unbeatable drive-time radius with multiple major markets within 600 miles.
Technical Training
Twenty minutes from one of the top tech colleges in the nation: Manhattan Area Technical College.
Education
An exceptional state public school system, ranked 15th in the country.
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