Employers across the country are saying the same thing. Loyalty is harder to find. Turnover feels constant. Training costs keep rising. Teams feel less stable than they once did.
What often goes unsaid is the quieter truth behind those complaints.
Many employers are systematically excluding some of the most loyal workers available. Millions of capable job seekers are screened out automatically because they have a criminal record. At the same time, companies insist they cannot find dependable employees. Both of those things cannot be true.
We come to this issue from opposite sides of the same system, and now we sit on the same side of the table.
One of us spent decades as a correctional warden, responsible for staffing safe facilities and trying to send people home better prepared for work and community than when they arrived. The other served decades in the federal prison system on a 213-year sentence stemming from a series of armed robberies committed in his early 20s, and is now an executive at Social Purpose Corrections, working with employers and correctional leaders on workforce development and reentry outcomes.
What we have learned, from very different vantage points, is that the labor shortage many employers describe is often self-inflicted.
Inside prison, we watched men and women show up every day to demanding jobs, complete difficult programs, earn degrees, and hold themselves to high standards in environments that would burn out many free world employees. The talent was there. The discipline was there. The loyalty was there.
What was missing was access.
When people return home, many never make it past automated screening systems. Not because of skill or work ethic, but because of a checkbox. Doors close before conversations begin. Over time, that exclusion does not just limit opportunity for individuals. It limits the workforce for employers.
This is not a feel-good argument. It is supported by evidence.
Research cited by the Society for Human Resource Management has found that employees with criminal records perform as well as, and in some cases better than, their peers. A peer reviewed study published in the IZA Journal of Labor Policy found that in several job categories, employees with criminal records demonstrated longer tenure and lower voluntary turnover than employees without records.
In a labor market defined by churn, loyalty is not sentimental. It is operational.
Employers often explain their hesitation in terms of risk. Risk to culture. Risk to liability. Risk to the brand. Those concerns are understandable. What is less often acknowledged is the cost of constant turnover, understaffed operations, and teams that never stay long enough to fully contribute.
From where we sit now, we see three things’ companies miss when they automatically filter people with records out of the applicant pool.
First, retention upside. People who finally get a real shot after years of closed doors do not treat it casually. They fight to keep it.
Second, culture signal. When a company hires someone who has had to earn trust the hard way, it sends a message to the entire workforce that growth is possible here and that people are not disposable.
Third, problem solving experience. People who have survived and transformed inside prison have spent years managing scarcity, conflict, and high stakes decisions. That is not a liability. It is an asset.
Fair chance hiring is not about lowering standards. It is about applying standards with intention. Background checks still matter. Performance still matters. Accountability still matters. What changes is the assumption that a past conviction permanently defines a person’s value at work.
At Social Purpose Corrections, where we both work today, fair chance hiring is not a slogan. It is a daily operating reality. People are hired with clear expectations, measured outcomes, and accountability, just like anywhere else. That approach has reinforced what the data already suggests. When people are trusted with responsibility, many rise to it.
Across the country, employers are demonstrating the same principle.
Awake Window and Door Co., a manufacturer based in Arizona, built its business from the start as a fair chance employer. More than half of its workforce is formerly incarcerated, and the company has grown while maintaining a stable, committed team. That is not charity. It is a business decision focused on retention.
There is also a broader impact worth acknowledging. Stable employment is widely recognized as one of the strongest predictors of reduced recidivism. When people leaving incarceration find meaningful work, families stabilize, communities are safer, and fewer people return to prison. The same decisions that improve retention can also reduce long term social costs.
For business leaders wondering where to start, the path does not require a leap of faith. It requires disciplined experimentation.
Audit your hiring filters. Remove blanket exclusions that prevent qualified candidates from ever reaching a human decision maker.
Pilot fair chance roles or sites. Start with one function or location. Set clear performance standards. Measure retention and turnover against your baseline.
Partner with organizations that understand this workforce. Do not improvise. Work with groups that can help design policies, support employees, and prepare managers to lead with clarity and accountability.
None of this requires lowering the bar. It requires recognizing that loyalty and potential do not disappear because of a line on an application.
Business leaders pride themselves on seeing opportunity where others see risk. Fair chance hiring remains one of the clearest opportunities left to do exactly that.
Loyalty is not gone. The workforce is not broken.
We are simply hiring past it.
The post What hiring someone who served 20 years in prison taught us about loyalty at work appeared first on Fortune.
