Sunday, September 27, 2009

Creating Real Opportunities in a Recession Economy

Many bloggers across the United States have posted comments on the dreaded statistic that based on the July 2009 Bureau of Labor Statistics data, there are about 6 unemployed Americans for every job opening - over three times the rate from when the recession began in December 2007.

Unfortunately, not many have offered advice as to how workforce professionals responsible for retraining and reemploying the nation’s dislocated workers should be dealing with the crisis. What exacerbates this information gap, is the shallow reporting by some media outlets who have chosen to focus coverage on workers who have utilized much needed retraining investments to recreate themselves for a new career only to find out that the jobs are not there upon program completion.

First of all, most people realize that the recession provides a necessary opportunity to add skills, competencies and credentials to their portfolio. Obviously, they hope to do this as quickly as possible so that they are prepared to seize the opportunity when it arises - surely because of financial considerations.

The average age of dislocated workers in the St. Louis region is 45-49 years of age (www.stlworkforce.org) and most have accrued liabilities over the years (e.g. mortgage, carnote, etc.). So, when they are asked about the shrinking job market upon graduation from their chosen discipline, the obvious disappointment comes across. Well, this is the nature of retraining in a recession economy and there are real ways to deal with these issues. I want to focus this online conversation on how we at St. Louis Community College, with the support of Missouri’s Division of Workforce Development and local workforce boards, are aligning the production of short-term certificate completers with labor demand in a contracting market.

Our college is working feverishly to increase the number of accelerated training programs so that dislocated workers have an option to recreate themselves more quickly. Many innovative community colleges are doing this. One of the differentiating qualities of our programs is that we have an evidence-based approach that: 1) utilizes real time survey research to identify market opportunities that are perhaps hidden in the static labor market information; 2) actively engages employers in conversations about the quality of their workers to uncover those areas that require a specialized intervention; 3) utilizes instructional designers to profile jobs so that the training is contextualized to the workplace; 4) partners with Missouri Career Centers to create a bring a wider array of assets to the table (e.g. recruitment, screening, training, placement); and 5) obtains commitment from employers to utilize tailor-made program as the primary source for employment in the specified occupation.

We call this approach Pre-Employment Training. Simply put, we are threading the needle, even in a recession, so that dislocated workers have reemployment opportunities in industries and occupations that are helping to fuel our recovery efforts. Current and future offerings include pre-employment training programs in health care, energy, aerospace and environmental remediation. The ROI inherent in the model includes increased employment retention on the demand side and lower unemployment on the supply side - a compelling investment for policy makers and community college leaders.

For more information visit St. Louis Community College’s Division of Workforce and Community Development.

1 comment: