An employee at Kubota Manufacturing who is late, leaves early or is absent without scheduling time off six times in a year no longer has a job, a plant official said Friday.

That’s a message the next generation needs to heed that officials conveyed at a Workforce Needs panel held Friday at Lanier Charter Academy at The Oaks in Gainesville. The meeting gathered Hall school principals, state Labor Commissioner Mark Butler and others to discuss the kind of “soft” skills young people need when transitioning from school to the working world.

Janet Lowery, senior human resource manager at Kubota, told principals the company’s punctuality standard includes “one minute late or leaving one minute early.” The No. 1 issue for employees at Kubota to retain their jobs is “related to attendance,” she said.

She was one of four members of the panel who spoke about the workplace habits needed to fill today’s jobs.

Lowery pointed to lat week’s winter storm, when all area schools were closed. Kubota had “96 percent of its workforce” on the job that day, she said.

She also said she went to a school recently for a talk and heard an announcement that said all “tardies” for the day were “excused because of inclement weather.” It was raining, Lowery said.

She added students at the school were “taking their sweet time to get to class” and had “no sense of urgency.”

Shelly Davis, vice president for existing industry for the Greater Hall Chamber of Commerce, echoed those sentiments. She said her daughters have turned in school work late, sometimes with no penalty. Students need to get the message that being late or turning in work late is “not acceptable,” Davis said.

Butler said human resource officials tell him prospective employees have been known to show up for interviews “dressed in pajamas.”

“How do you not know that you’re not supposed to show up in your pajamas,” he asked.

Butler said public schools should require a course on “soft skills and ethics.” That “would be 10 times more effective than taking some goofy multiple choice test,” he declared.

Lowery agreed with Butler about pajamas and said she has seen people show up for interviews “with (images of) marijuana leaves on their sleeves.”

Despite the continuing problems with interview skills, attendance and dependability, Butler said the Gainesville area — which includes multiple counties — had 15,000 job openings available Friday morning.

Statewide, he said, 120,000 jobs are open. That would be a problem for economic development if it continues, Butler explained, because companies looking to expand or bring a plant here would view the large number of openings as a detriment to finding employees.

Ray Perren, president of Lanier Technical College, said workforce development is “the mission” of the college, and how technical schools can lead to good paying, stable jobs.

“So many think the American dream is tied to a four-year degree,” Perren said, adding that is no longer the case.

“Our graduates are going to be successful in the workplace,” he said, or the college will retrain them at no cost.

Lowery agreed with Perren, saying Kubota has nearly constant needs for maintenance technicians, machinists and welders.

“We’re not struggling to hire engineers,” she said.

“Soft skills” were emphasized by all the panel members over more technical and specialized training. Butler said 89 percent of first-time employees who lose their jobs do so because of a “lack of soft skills.”

Rope Roberts, the panel’s moderator who works in economic development for Georgia Power, said soft skills are those that allow employees to “interact effectively and harmoniously with other people.”

Davis said her first piece of advice to would-be job seeker is more basic: “No. 1 for me would be eye contact.” She suggested students should practice looking at people when they talk.