When Gil De Las Alas came to work at Uline Inc. in Pleasant Prairie 10 years ago, he found that the Racine and Kenosha region has experienced such an exodus of employers that around half of the workforce from the surrounding communities were commuting out of the area for work.

As chief HR officer for the packaging and shipping supplies giant, he believed that people would rather work closer to home.

It turns out, he was right.

These days, more than half of Uline’s 4,000 employees live in Kenosha or Racine counties, he told the crowd at the Milwaukee Business Journal’s Racine/Kenosha Counties Growth Summit, held Oct. 22 at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside campus.

De Las Alas was joined at the summit by Serafino Fabiano, associate vice president and site head, Kenosha, for Eli Lilly and Co., an international pharmaceutical company based in Indianapolis that’s planning a $3 billion expansion of its recently acquired plant in Kenosha.

The two companies neighbor each other, with Uline’s massive campus and Lilly’s under-construction expansion growing side by side in Kenosha County.

With employers such as Uline, Eli Lilly and Co., Microsoft Corp., and others continuing to add staff by the hundreds, demand for those skilled workers may outpace the ability of the region to supply them, the company leaders said.

As a result, attracting people to the area becomes important. While housing plays a key role in attracting a base for the workforce, education is also a major concern, De Las Alas said. And the needs start early.

Read more at the bizjournals.com.