Page 14 - BusinessWest January 9, 2023

CELEBRATING 125 Years!
JGS Lifecare - Sosin Center for Rehab | Photography by Andrew Rugge
BUILDING HISTORY
SINCE 1897
82-84 North St., Northampton, MA 01060 | 413-584-0310 | www.dasullivan.com
bit — we’re starting to see those issues become isolated, and opportuni- ties for us to create some guidance and counsel about preventive mea- sures. On the employment side, instead of seeing people float from job to job, I think we’re going to see a little more staying power.”
Falcone: “We really track consumer senti- ment, and what we’re expecting is a really soft Q1, but then when Q2, Q3, and Q4 hit, we’re expecting that consumer senti- ment will increase slightly, and that we’re going to have some sort of recovery come the back half of the year.”
Hatiras: “With ARPA funds drying up, we’re going to have pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. So our emphasis is on closing the staffing gap. If we can do that, and not bleed money on the expense side, I think we’ll be OK; I think we’re poised to have a good year, as long as we’re able to attract nurses here.”
BusinessWest: What are the major chal- lenges facing businesses in the year ahead?
“For us, it’s the same old, same old — trying to get people into manufacturing. We’ve dealt with the generation gap for years, and are getting more involved with the vocational schools and getting
parents to understand that manufacturing is a viable option for young people.”
14 JANUARY 9, 2023
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Kasa: “For us, it’s the same old, same old — trying to get people into manufacturing. We’ve dealt with the generation gap for years, and are getting more involved with the vocational schools and getting parents to understand that manufacturing is a viable option for young people. It’s not just manufacturing; they can be their own entrepreneur in plumbing or electrical, whatever it might be. Also, holding onto folks; ever since COVID came through, it just seems harder and harder to find people who want to work, and want to work the extra hours that we’re giving them. Workforce is key for us — building on the workforce.”
Hatiras: “In healthcare, there is a great deal of concern, and the most concerning part is the continuing shortage of personnel, which has created this market for temporary staffing at rates that are truly outra- geous. To put things in perspective, we have about 20 nurses on tempo- rary staff that we get through agencies. Those 20 nurses, on an annual basis, cost us $5 million; each nurse costs us $250,000, because the rates are exorbitant — the nurses get a lot of money, but there’s also a middleman that makes untold amounts of money from this crisis.
“As a nation, the federal government is doing a lot of things — they
Tom Senecal notes that the Fed’s actions to boost interest rates have not yielded much improvement on the inflation front, something to watch in 2023.