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The Joyce Foundation, based in Chicago, recently announced a national campaign to elevate the concept of ‘investing in people” to forefront of our economic policy. In support of the campaign, the foundation awarded Skills2Compete a $1 million grant.
Skills2Compete advocates that every American worker have access to two years of education or training beyond high school and that they possess the basic skills necessary for post-secondary training.
Their rationale is that over 50% of jobs in America are “middle-skilled;” the electricians, plumbers, machinists, paramedics, and lab technicians to name a few, that require more than a high school education but less than a four year college degree. Many people believe that “middle-skilled” have faded in the background and a concerted effort is needed to raise their visibility.
I would argue that vocational education in general needs to be moved up on the workforce agenda. Learning a trade or becoming a paraprofessional is no longer “Your Father’s Voc Ed.” The array of occupations is extensive, the training is rigorous, and success rate is high. You can have a wonderfully satisfying career with higher earnings than might be imagined without the cost of a four year degree.
However, unfortunately, once again the crisis du jour, this time the Wall Street meltdown, is dominating the debate at the national level and may once again overshadow the need for a meaningful discussion about how to train America’s next generation of workers.
Bailing out Wall Street may be important, but not helping to train workers to increase their skills so they can compete in a 21st Century economy and increase their earning, in other words bailing out Main Street, is equally important. It’s no coincidence that states where mortgage delinquencies are highest are also states with the highest rates of job losses. It is no surprise that bad debts are mounting fastest in California and Florida – where jobs are evaporating fastest.
What don’t the candidates get?
In this election season, it is necessary to bring the workforce discussion to center stage, and involve visionary policymakers who are ready to talk about a new approach to U.S. opportunity and innovation.
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Generation Y (aka Millennials) are a significant part of today’s workforce, and as they enter the workforce in greater numbers they can present a challenge for managers unfamiliar with who Millenials are or how they work. If you are going to be managing Millenials, you had better make an effort to understand them.
Depending on which statistics you believe, Millenials are people born between 1980 and 2000, or 1981 and 1999. Unlike the Gen-Xers and the Boomers, the Millennials have developed work characteristics and tendencies from “helicopter” parents who hovered around every move their children made, from structured lives that included computer camps, organized athletics, and from contact with diverse people.
Millennials have a “can-do” attitude about tasks at work and look for feedback about how they are doing frequently – even daily. Millennials want a variety of tasks and expect that they will accomplish every one of them. Millennials are used to working in teams and work well with diverse coworkers.
Positive and confident, millennials are ready to take on the world.
They come into the workplace with incredible energy, great technical skills, (they are often referred to as the “connected generation”) and most are driven to succeed.
What they seek is leadership, and even structure, from their older and managerial coworkers. However, they expect that you will draw them out and respect their ideas. Millennials need to see where their career is going and they want to know exactly what they need to do to get there.
Millennials await their next challenge – and there better be a next challenge or the most connected generation in history may network right out of their current workplace.
On the downside, however, is that employers are concerned that Millenials have short attention spans, are impatient, have a low tolerance for “things that don’t work as they should,” and an inability to think long range. They may often be reluctant to perform tasks that they feel are beneath them and have been categorized as unwilling to “pay their dues.”
Whether you agree with their work style or not, it is the responsibility of management to understand them better, and to find mutually acceptable ways to incorporate them into the workforce. Often, to the frustration of some organizational leaders, that means your organization needs to adapt to them, not the other way around. It may be a hard pill to swallow, but the upside is huge.
To fail in this integrate Millenials into your company puts your future talent pool at risk. And not just from the standpoint of your company’s ability to attract and retain Millenials, but also the missed opportunity that comes from not being able to learn from them. Their “different” work style notwithstanding, they do bring a lot to the table.
What has been your organization’s experience with Millenials?
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For many firms, interns may represent serious untapped potential.
An internship provides a student an opportunity for a real world work experience, and helps to connect the theory of the classroom with the practical application of the real world. Designed to assist students in the career exploration process, internships also help to determine if that career matches their interests and skills.
However, an internship is not simply a part-time job. An internship differs from a part-time job in that internships are structured learning experiences in a work setting designed to give a student the opportunity to learn about a career interest and gain valuable knowledge and experience in a particular field. An intern works just like an employee but its purpose, unlike a part-time job, is to provide mentorship as well as supervision, and training.
Internships test an intern’s skills and interests, provide insight into prerequisites needed for employment, help to develop a network of professional contacts for future opportunities and references, provide valuable work experience such as workplace communication skills, and help build a stronger resume.
We all know about the predictions of significant labor shortage in the near future. We also know that employers prefer knowledgeable entry-level workers with some experience in a real world work environment. What is less known is the fact that work-based learning is far more effective than classroom training alone. Internships help connect the classroom to the workplace.
Internships, whether paid or unpaid, benefit both the student and the business.
Does your business have an internship program currently? Have you been an intern?
If so, what has your experience been?
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If you haven’t read Tough Choices or Tough Times, the National Center on Education and the Economy’s report on the American education system, I suggest you download a copy and study it. The authors believe, and rightly so, that the United States needs to confront some tough realities about its education system. To state their conclusions briefly, the report contends that the core problem with the American educational and training systems is that they were “designed for a time when most American workers needed only a rudimentary education to find and keep a good job.” The existing system is not and will not be sufficient to create workers capable of competing in the 21st century global economy. The Commission recommends that “the United States transition itself to a largely creative economy.” They define that an economy where most jobs fall in into one of the following areas: - Research;
- Development;
- Design;
- Marketing & Sales; and
- Global Supply Chain Management.
The shift needs to be more demand driven -- driving the development of tomorrow’s workers into industries and professions that are needed by American employers. Most educators today couldn’t begin to tell you how American business defines a “qualified worker” or what American business thinks about the course curriculum in their schools. For the most part, they’ve never asked. The issue, regardless of what politicians, educators, and teachers unions will tell us, is not only money. There is not enough money at any level of government to fix this problem simply by spending more. Yes, the system needs to be adequately funded. But that’s not the only issue. We can get where we must go only by changing the system itself. The system needs to be re-engineered and not simply improved incrementally. One look at the local, regional, and national high school dropout rates should convince you that the system isn’t working as well as it needs to be. And it’s not only the education system that needs re-engineering. The workforce development system could use a radical overhaul as well. The old work of workforce development was just about getting someone a job. Workforce advisors would meet with an individual, examine their work history, and maybe conduct a skills/interest assessment. Subsequently, the goal was to find the person a job that most closely matched the assessment. In today’s workforce development funding environment, this is no longer enough. Like the education system, this worked at a different time when American needed different workers. We need to move beyond simply helping people with resume writing, job search, and interviewing skills. Essentially, we need a more effective method to educate and train people to meet the needs of business based on future economic trends.
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As I watch the current race for the White House, I often wonder when the dialogue about where the next generation of American workers will come from and how they will be trained will begin. There is very little talk about job training and even less action.
According to the General Accounting Office (GAO), in 1978 the United States Department of Labor (USDOL) spent approximately $9.5 billion on job training. Adjusted for inflation, we’d have to be spending $30 billion today -- just to stay even.
Instead, we’re spending $3.2 billion or 10.6% of what we spent 29 years ago. A little more than 25% of what we spend on the Iraq War every month! And employers wonder why they cannot find qualified workers.
But the lack of funding isn’t the only issue. Among the facets of this non-debate is the contrast between the American approach to solving this problem and the approach being used successfully in Europe, where government, business, and labor unions, the tripod upon which a good training system must sit, have created an apprenticeship system that provides real training for real jobs.
Unfortunately, America has little hope of emulating that which exists in Europe. Our history, politics, and social structure are so different from what exists in Europe that their system would be impossible to replicate.
For example, because most European countries guarantee income and basic social benefits there is more of an incentive for them to educate, train, and employ as many people as possible, if for no other reason, to keep them off the public dole.
In America, under the guise of “welfare reform,” we have eliminated many of those guarantees, but failed to adequately fund a system to train people for meaningful work that allows them to be self-sufficient. We have kicked them off the public dole but have not trained them to be productive workers. Reducing the welfare rolls did not necessarily equate to improving someone’s standard of living.
Time is of the essence. The workforce development system is in need of a radical overhaul. The Workforce Investment Act, or some iteration thereof, needs to be enacted -- and quickly.
We need to look beyond our own borders, swallow our pride, and figure out how we replicate the best of what other workforce development systems are doing. Others have figured it out, we can too.
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