SUCCESS RATE VARIES WILDLY IN ENDING WELFARE.

Byline: Jon Nordheimer The New York Times

Deborah C. Washam shook her head with an emotion that appeared to be equal parts sorrow and exasperation.

Of the more than 80 women she has hired in the last 17 months as part of a generous welfare-to-work program sponsored in part by this city's corporate community, fewer than 25 are still on the job. Many of the others quit in a huff over perceived slights to their dignity. Washam calls it their refusal to follow directions.

``I don't think they've had much exposure to structure in their lives,'' said Washam, president and chief executive of Community Home Health Care, a licensed agency that dispatches homemakers to shop and do light housework for frail elderly and disabled residents of Kansas City's urban core.

``As single mothers, they are on their own and think of themselves as authority figures,'' Washam said. ``They won't take routine supervision at work.''

President Clinton, in accepting the Democratic nomination Thursday, declared ``a moral obligation'' under the Welfare Reform Act he signed two weeks ago to move Americans off welfare and into jobs. But the magnitude of the task seems best appreciated by those already dealing with the challenge.

Overcoming years of dependency on open-ended entitlement programs can be daunting, according to those who administer welfare-to-work efforts.

Employers express satisfaction with new employees who show initiative and a willingness to learn, even when that has required training in rudiments like the proper way to answer phones. But business people are frustrated by many welfare veterans.

Problems include absenteeism, lack of discipline about work hours, poor reading and communications skills, and open resentment of direction, some business leaders say. And the current programs have not even reached people on welfare who have serious problems such as alcohol and drug abuse or below-average intelligence.

Concern resonates nationally among business leaders, who are only beginning to figure out employers' roles as the states begin a trek this fall into uncharted territory of mandates that those on welfare must find work or face the loss of benefits for themselves and their children.

``In the view of the small-business person, welfare is right up there with balancing the budget as what's wrong with big government,'' said Jeffrey R. Joseph, vice president for domestic policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. ``Yet the average business person - or the average politician, for that matter - has no clue as to what's coming now that the welfare bill has been passed.

``They want welfare people to go out and work, but there's a big difference between visceral reactions and actually dealing with programs that can help lead them to work.''

Joseph said a hodgepodge of plans had been advanced to ease the welfare-to-work transition, adding that the national picture is more confused than coherent, varying from state to state.

``Those with low unemployment are serious about finding reasonable ways of accomplishing the goals of reform. They need every worker they can get,'' he explained. ``Areas with high unemployment and low sophistication, where they can't figure out what to do with people who already have skills, may be less interested.''

Some communities - notably places where unemployment is low and unskilled workers are in demand - have already undertaken efforts to move welfare recipients into the work force.

In Tulsa, Okla., for example, the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce created a nonprofit corporation in 1992 to train adults on welfare for assembly and manufacturing jobs at companies that pick up the training costs.

Tim Westberry, the program manager, said 60 full-time and 13 temporary jobs were filled in the first eight months of 1996 by the heads of families on Aid to Families with Dependent Children who underwent training. Throughout the program's history, the job-retention ratCe has been higher than 80 percent, he said.

Clinton challenged ``every business person in America who has ever complained about the failure of the welfare system to try to hire somebody off welfare, and try hard.'' Yet some leaders of business groups are blunt in disavowing any suggestion that the private sector should assume responsibility for making welfare reform work.

``Business is not in the business of providing jobs for welfare recipients,'' Robert T. Jones, president and chief executive officer of the National Alliance of Business, said in a telephone interview before the president's speech. He contends it is up to the states to prepare people to enter the work force.

In Kansas City, an alliance called the Local Investment Commission, or LINC, financed by public and private sources, is quietly shaping a model of inner-city dynamics for a world without welfare guarantees.

Backed by the Kansas City Foundation and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the alliance is striving, with blessings from the state, to change the focus of the social-service apparatus from helping people get welfare benefits to finding them jobs.

As part of LINC, an agency called the Full Employment Council is using federal welfare and food-stamp funds to subsidize new jobs for welfare recipients.

When a participant is hired, $500 a month in wage supplements goes to the employer, explained Clyde McQueen, the council's president and chief executive. That works out to about half the $6 per hour at which most new workers start.

Families also continue to receive full Medicaid benefits and day-care coverage for four years, services that would cost ordinary workers $600 or more a month in after-tax income, he said.