A Good Job on Hawaiʻi Island: Vibrant Hawaiʻi and HWFC Talk Story
Listening to the voices of Hawaiʻi's workers and understanding their needs is crucial for building a thriving workforce in the state. The Hawaiʻi Workforce Funders Collaborative (HWFC) facilitates collaboration among stakeholders to develop effective solutions. Over the past six months, HWFC partnered with Islander Institute to explore what constitutes a "good job" in Hawaiʻi. Their insights, gathered through community discussions, are compiled in a report titled "A Good Job in Hawaiʻi." The article below - taken from a conversation with Janice Ikeda of Vibrant Hawaiʻi - is part of a series of pieces that highlight different narratives from this work.
As one of the community-based organization contributors to HWFC’s “A Good Job in Hawaiʻi” Framework, Vibrant Hawaiʻi is deeply invested in increasing equitable opportunity, resilience, and abundance in Hawaiʻi Island communities. HWFC and Janice Ikeda, Vibrant Hawaiʻi Executive Director, recently connected to talk story about the “A Good Job in Hawaiʻi” Framework, the challenges and opportunities to creating good jobs on Hawaiʻi Island and beyond, and how Vibrant Hawaiʻi’s internal approach to creating good jobs and healthy work environments.
In January 2023, Ikeda was sitting in workforce pipeline stakeholder meetings at University of Hawaiʻi. Around the same time, she was also talking to Andrew Aoki of the Islander Institute, who was beginning research for the Good Job in Hawaiʻi Report. “In the stakeholder meetings, I noticed that the careers being promoted seemed very industry-driven - what’s important to industry. But I was curious if community members would consider these good jobs,” says Ikeda. This query, shared with Aoki, helped guide a deeper consideration into what insight could be gained through community-based participatory action research.
Aligned Values: Contribution and Connection
Fast forward to the release of the “A Good Job in Hawaiʻi” Framework, and Ikeda recognizes the alignment between this framework and Vibrant Hawaiʻi’s own inquiry into the wants, needs, and values of the Hawaiʻi Island community. “In 2019, Vibrant Hawaiʻi asked 200 local people ʻIn your most vibrant vision of your life, how do you invest your capital - human, social, cultural, and financial?’ What people told us was that their highest vision of capital is human - they want to feel like they’re making a difference. Social capital came next - they value relationships and networks. These two things reinforce each other to create a cycle of abundance, being, and kuleana that are directly reflected in [the “A Good Job in Hawaiʻi” Framework’s] values of making a meaningful contribution in the places and for the people you are connected to.” says Ikeda.
Challenges and Opportunities: Good Jobs on Hawaiʻi Island
One of the biggest challenges that Hawaiʻi Island people face when it comes to having a good job is the dissonance, and distance, between where they work and live. One of the key findings of the “A Good Job in Hawaiʻi” Framework is that people want to work where they want to live. On Hawaiʻi Island, many of the jobs are on the west side of the island - where the hospitality industry is concentrated - while the majority of the population resides on the east side of the island. Ikeda explains, “For many people, it’s not realistic to live where you work [on the west side] due to the lack of housing that the workforce can afford and childcare. There are a few hopeful projects on the west side, but as of now there’s a huge disparity.”
Ikeda identifies opportunity, however, in ʻāina and community based initiatives including small scale ag, supporting the movement for ag housing, and supporting teacher housing close to schools to align job opportunities with values. “The majority of our community is truly values-led. They value family and time to connect with ʻāina, and their resolute, unwavering commitment to this can mean forgoing opportunities for financial advancement. When you look at the bottom fiscal line it seems like they're not measuring up to the standard of success by the conventional standard that often requires putting time connecting with family and ʻāina aside. [In order to create meaningful opportunities] we need to reconsider the narrative we promote about success” says Ikeda.
Good Jobs at Vibrant Hawaiʻi
Vibrant Hawaiʻi seeks to lead by example, putting clear intention and effort into creating ʻgood jobs’ that are purpose-driven and pay a livable wage. Ikeda asks, “As an employer, how do you balance high performance and being rooted and wholly well as a team? How much do policies that aim to create this balance actually cost?” In response to these questions, Vibrant Hawaiʻi has taken an active stance and implemented the following policies and programs:
Remote/hybrid work: Allowing people to work from where they live and therefore continue to invest in their local communities;
Seasonality: Aligning with the seasons of ʻāina to bring balance and focus to work as well as incorporate rest (e.g. shifting from external output to internal reflection, analysis, and planning during the season of makahiki);
Ambassador program: Investing in young adults by providing training, certification, networking opportunities, and real work experience so they may enter the workforce with experience beyond their years and the capacity to transform the organizations they enter;
Passion and Purpose Academy (PAPA): Providing free access to skill building and certifications (e.g. CPR training, device access, digital literacy workshops) that create pathways to economic advancement for community members who may otherwise have difficulty tapping into resources.
Ikeda shares, “In my conversation with Andrew [Aoki of Islander Institute], he said, ʻSometimes you gotta ask yourself if you are planting kalo or koa.’ Not that one is of more or less value, but they have different seasons of planting and harvesting. It’s important for organizations to wrestle with questions of what high production/performance means - is it a short game with high outputs or a long game with high transformation and impact? We grapple with this so we can best steward resources, including human resources.”
Reassessing Success and Making Change from the Inside Out
When asked what can be done to create good jobs in Hawaiʻi, Ikeda has a single word answer. Decolonization. “How much revenue is enough revenue? What are the measures of success? If the only measure is profit, then we'll exploit employees and take shortcuts around safety and quality. We’ll value centralized industries and monopolies, rather than allowing for decentralized models that allow more people to participate in the economy in meaningful ways and work where they live,” says Ikeda.
Ikeda is hopeful that as Vibrant Hawaiʻi gains brand presence and produces reports about their internal process, it will contribute to a new standard and motivate other organizations to reflect on how they can do better by their workers. “If we can be vulnerable and authentic in sharing our journey, maybe others can have the hard conversations about what their real corporate values are and how they are being expressed. I don’t know how to change other organizations. We can only do our own internal work, and if enough people do this it will change the system because we are all part of the system.”
