[WEBINAR]
The Workforce Ahead: Future of Employment

Hi everyone. This is Ira Wolfe, Success Performance Solutions. I’m very grateful and excited that you chose to be here today for the first of our four part series. The overall focus is the Workforce Ahead, The Future of Employment or the Future of Employability.

Today’s session is going to focus on “Expect the Unexpected.” My guest for these four webinars is Dr Ed Gordon . He’s the author of 20 books on jobs and labor economics, history, and just an overall good guy. He knows more about labor and jobs than anyone that I know.

Today’s event and the other webinars will be sponsored by Success Performance Solution. That’s my company. I hope you’ll go up to the website and take a look. You can go to https;//www.successperformancesolutions.com and hopefully you’ll take a look around. Finally, there are quite a few free resources that I’ve made available. They range from white papers to books, to videos, to podcasts, online learning. you name it, it’s there. I’ve created a webpage. It’s at https://bit.ly /free-resources-2020.

Ed Gordon: Welcome, everybody, we appreciate you all being here. We had a great, great response. So obviously it must be you Ed that everybody wants to hear. We’re here to talk about the future of employment, the future of jobs. I know no one better off to have this conversation. I’ve said this earlier on another interview. I was explaining who you were and I said you’ve been waiting for this moment for 30 years at research setting and talking about what, what the future was going to look like. future jobs. I met you when I was writing about the Perfect Labor Storm, 20 years ago. Our paths crossed but we actually never met one another until now. This is the closest we’ve come to meeting, but we’ve had a lot of phone conversations and then we’ve had some, video interviews. Ed, you’ve been preparing for this moment for a long time and I know you’ve got at least 20 years of solid research on the subject. Ed Gordon is a labor economist, author of 20 some books and he’s, he’s certainly published a lot of white papers. He’s an historian too.I’m really pleased to have you here Ed, You have add a lot to share. I don’t want to waste any more time. Just the reminder for everybody if you want to put in where you’re calling from, in the chat, if you have any specific questions, what to address if there’s something we missed we need to follow up on, we will be monitoring the chat, throughout the next 50 minutes or so. Now I’m going to turn it over to you Ed.

Speaker 3: Well, welcome to the first part of the workforce road ahead and today we’re gaining with something that none of us expected. You know, the COVID- 19 emergency is unprecedented in modern history, certainly in the lives of all of us. This is a major crossroads in history and it is accelerating trends that were already under way and is going to produce tremendous changes across American society, not only for this decade but I think for decades afterwards. You know, none of us really know exactly what is going to happen and I don’t have a crystal ball either folks. However, being a historian and economist, I can tell you what we see happening is that the coven pandemic is combining with other issues and it is going to push forward systemic change. So let’s first of all, let’s just look at unemployment. Unemployment, as we all know, has been historically very, very low.

Speaker 3: However, there have been large numbers of individuals who had quit looking for jobs. And before the pandemic actually hit, we had over as far as Imperial consulting was concerned, there were over 10 million vacant jobs across the United States, and the majority of those were good jobs. they were, higher skill jobs and medium skill jobs. Well now the pandemic has had, we have over 36 million Americans who suddenly are unemployed and they have applied for benefits. The greatest numbers since the great depression. Now most of them have been furloughed and most of them will return to work after this epidemic plague, whatever you want to call it, ends well, labor department says last month that there were 14 over 14% of the workforce was unemployed. We think that a more accurate picture is a figure of over 18% and the longer these workers remain unemployed, the more employers are going to have to rescale them because their skills will becoming rodent.

Speaker 3: Well now, right now the workforce is about 156 million people across the United States. Over the next eight years, it will grow to 171 million. However, the participation rate, the number of people actually working, which is now over 62.7% will fall to a little over 61%. And the reason for this is of course the huge numbers, 15 million Americans retiring. But also we also predict that many Americans are now under educated for the fourth industrial revolution. That is it. We’re now, in the midst of which we’ll be talking about in subsequent programs. Some jobs though actually have posted some increases. While we certainly can look at all the healthcare areas such as nursing, physicians, entrants, psychiatrists, but believe it or not, we have other things such as interpreters and translators and manual laborers. Many people have left the restaurant industry and airlines to work in hospitals or in warehouses.

Speaker 3: Then we have a tremendous, the decline in the area of, travel and retail, and light truck delivery people, customer service representatives. Well, we can expect over the next 10 years, tremendous growth in certain areas. One will continue to be healthcare. We have millions of healthcare workers who are now or about to retire in this decade, but the numbers of people in areas of AI, other technologies, the areas of, personal, financial counseling, even education and training, we’re going to see a tremendous up tick and surge in new jobs. Well, what other trends has the crisis brought on

Speaker 3: First of all, the merger and acquisition trends that have been going on now for quite some time are going to be very muted. Inflation, I should say deflation is now a major possibility in major economies. As the Japanese suffered in the 1990s we may begin to suffer deflation, but later on, inflation in a year or two could be a major factor, mainly because of the $17 trillion in worldwide debt that has been poured in by major governments to prevent a worldwide depression. The question is, can we grow the U S economy faster to pay off that debt We’re going to talk about that in just a minute, whether it’s going to require, we also can tell you that automation now will be accelerated. KPMG recently surveyed businesses across America and 40% of them have said that they’re going to increase automation very soon. Jobs will become more complex.

Speaker 3: Why Well, robotics, AI, they still need human thinking skills to win, advance the program to manufacture, to repair, and to properly utilize to increase productivity. All of these interventions, the results workers are going to require improved general education and specialized career skills from a post-secondary training, whether they’re just coming out of high school or they’re already employed and the majority of workers will need continuing education to remain employed and to remain productive, with their employees or employers, I should say. Now, this presents major needs for structural changes to delivery systems across the economy. They have been long overdue and have been prevented by a focus on short-termism and other issues. We now think that they are going to be pushed forward in order to grow the economy and increase productivity in order to avoid a major economic downturn, supply and demand of available workers, or it’s going to radically change in this economy such as offshoring and globalization.

Speaker 3: Offshoring will slow. It already has. Globalization has taken some major hits around the world from many in many, nations and ensuring has sped up for many reasons. One of which is the low cost advantage of countries in Asia has been eliminated. And right now, the United States is bringing more production closer to markets, reducing transportation costs, improving quality and avoiding political issues such as, the corruption problems that exist in other countries that have, proved to be very expensive to many employers. The other issue, our regional education to employment talent delivery systems right now, we’ll introduce that topic cause we’ll talk about this extensively in the future, but largely the system we have now, which was

invented a hundred years ago, is really geared to a 1970 economy before the major event of computerization and technology out of computer centers and putting them in PCs and now other equipment and spreading them all across businesses and, and, production facilities. So, these systems largely are antiquated and are now under producing they high quality educated workers that we need throughout all areas of the economy.

Speaker 3: One example of a major change is a earn and learn program. Here’s an unprecedented effort by companies in Wisconsin. Linquist machine corporation is one of them and other companies where they’re combining learning and local technical and community colleges plus actually hands-on paid learning on the job in order to, have the electromechanical technologies, welding and machining, positions filled. As I noted when we started a few moments ago, we have many jobs that have remained unfilled and a growing number of, technical jobs in, across all business sectors simply because we don’t have the talent to fill it. So the top priority, what is the top priority According to the conference board and Korn ferry, the number one issue that leading executives around the world has said and particularly in the United States, is attracting talent and developing talent and more innovation in order to raise productivity within businesses.

Speaker 3: Companies are having a harder and harder time matching the jobs to the available workforce. We have to fix the skills mismatch. Many of you, at least I hope many of you had read many of my prior books from skill Wars to the 2010 meltdown, winning the global talent showdown and now future jobs. And these books detailed for all of you, how this problem has gradually been building. In fact, the first book I wrote about this was in 1991 entitled closing the literacy gap in American business. Well now the issue is not literacy. American workers are literate. The issue now is the level of education development that they’ve received, elementary, secondary, and then postsecondary. So what we see happening is the Cove in 19 has raised the urgency of this misalignment and we see now regional efforts that have been underway for at least the last 20 years across the U S under

many local brand names, aligning businesses, school systems, and within communities, local government, economic development, workforce boards and nonprofits.

Speaker 3: And they have been working in an attempt to better prepare more American workers for this new world of work and produce innovations as well as traditional, skills. So coming into this, this is overview is important. I think many of you have heard these things before or bits and pieces of this. The Kobe epidemic that we now have now has increased the urgency and is now very strongly given a reason that we need to pay to this skills mismatch. How many people in New York city when that pandemic hit and the resources were not there of healthcare personnel die because the nurses, the doctors, the lab techs were not available to properly diagnose and care for these individuals. Right now the pandemic, if this were a baseball game in about the second ending, there are going to be many peaks and valleys, I’m afraid and the shortage of healthcare workers where the hotspots develop will be seen again and again.

Speaker 3: And the question is what can we do not just in healthcare but in all these other areas to avoid not the world ending in a big bang, but in a meltdown as we simply lack the necessary train workers in many fields, not just the professionals but the service workers because now these are blending together both the service people and they professionals need more education in order to do their jobs properly. In subsequent programs. We’ll do a little bit more in depth on that particular issue, but I need to introduce this now because the Kobe 19 is finally bringing this issue to the fore. It’s ugly. It’s been festering for years. Many companies talk to me about it, but they don’t want to touch it because we don’t want to rock the boat systemically. It’s sad. A third of the population will get a really great education.

Speaker 3: Another third will get something the bottom third. Don’t worry about it. We need two thirds or more of our current population now in the workforce to be at the level that the fourth industrial revolution demands and we’ll talk about the global nature of this. This is not an American problem. This is a global problem because now our technology has basically outraced the educational systems worldwide to deal with it. I’ll repeat that. Our technology and the fourth industrial revolution has basically outraced the educational systems worldwide to deal with it and the willingness of our culture, business, government, parents and educators to face the fact that this is a new world. This is a new world order. We invented the technology. If we’re going to use it, we have to have the people that can properly manage it and use it and build it and design it and maintain it.

Speaker 3: Think back to 1900 where most people were on the farms to 1920 when most Americans and lived in cities. That was a revolution. We invented the current educational system to deal with it. We broadened it somewhat during the 20th century. By 1970 we had the best educated workforce in the entire world. Then things began to change as we continue to upgrade. It was bill Gates who did this to us. Isn’t that terrible He had to spread those pieces all over the world. Well, it’s happened and it’s continuing to grow. The trip is getting more and more powerful, but I don’t see a data from star Trek appearing in your office anytime, which means that technology is wonderful when it works, but it takes a thinking mind to use it. You just can’t press a button. So those are some of the issues that we look right now.

Speaker 3: Some of this is unexpected because people have avoided thinking about it or talking about it. My kids are all right, our local school, elementary and secondary, they’re are great and wonderful. There is no problem. That’s simply not true because what we see now is employers are having a harder and harder time, not just employing individuals coming out of high school, but even individuals coming out of our four year institutions who can’t, who cannot properly communicate in writing or oral communication, who lack interpersonal skills, who sometimes many often lack even the math skills needed in order to do the work. So those are some of the issues that I wanted to introduce today. And I think now we have plenty of time for a chat and some questions. So, IRA.

Speaker 2: Okay, I’m going to come back online here and appreciate that ed. So there’s a number of things that I know, and, and you didn’t say this, so I’m going to bring it up and I’m going to screw up the statistics, but I think this was 10 years ago. it’s early on. I’ve quoted it many, many times. Yes. But you were saying that we would have at some point, and this, and you, and you and I and a lot of other people, we’re not predicting the pandemic. We knew it was possible, but what we were suggesting is that the technology, and, and just change would require individuals have a different set of skills, a more advanced set of skills. But you projected at one time that there was going to be 150 million people, kind of frontline workers, lower skilled workers competing for maybe 40 to 50 million jobs. Am I, am I correct in that Yes.

Speaker 3: And I’ll be updating those numbers in the white paper that we’ll be publishing later this year. And the issue, the issue is it’s not a question of just low skilled people, people that have dropped out or graduate from high school reading at the eighth grade level and we have plenty of those. It’s also individuals who have graduated, maybe had some college, didn’t finish, don’t have a certificate or a degree. They have work experience. They’ve had good jobs for a long time and now automation has come along and replaced their jobs, not just low skill jobs but now medium level skill jobs. And those jobs have been replaced with other more sophisticated jobs that require higher level problem solving and thinking skills. The difficulty is we have many individuals who simply don’t have those skills, those aptitudes. Can they be developed Yes. Yes. Are we doing it

Speaker 3: No. when I, I founded, a training and development business in 1979 in Chicago. We get customized training mainly in Chicago, but across the country that grew in the eighties as computerization started and companies set up training departments, corporate universities, we helped set up corporate universities. Then we saw by the middle nineties short-termism took over and now everything could be done online. You don’t need a classroom, you don’t need blended learning. It can all be done remotely. Sorry, but I can tell you now is a learning theorist, someone who taught at different universities and I spent a great deal of time studying the uses of e-learning and blended learning. I can tell you that in most cases, blended learning far out distances, just pure e-learning mainly because most people do not have the patience, the motivation, the drive to finish programs. And then it’s a question not just a finishing a program, but what degree of learning results after it is over.

Speaker 3: And the studies show increasingly that in most cases, not all the degree of learning would be far greater if it was blended. And companies have eliminated those, those programs, particularly when we had the economic crisis in 2008 but even before then they had been seriously eroded and then companies started building it back. Unfortunately, within the last two years, we now see last year that companies cut back their training again, five, 5%. Even though they have millions of unfilled jobs, they have eliminated most not all have eliminated a entry level job training and training and updates for their workers. And that’s costing them according to the us chamber of commerce, an unfilled job costs a company $26,000 a year in lost productivity and profit on average, not averaging all these positions. So we’re looking at a loss last year, somewhere around $300 billion. I will have more to say about this, later. And in the white paper that we’re working on now, they’re 20, 30 jobs pandemic, which will come out probably in early, early next year after the election. And the pandemic, I hope has been brought under control.

Speaker 2: So let me go back to that statistic that I said. And again, it was somewhere, it was pretty astonishing that there’d be a, I think I’ve been using referencing you for, for more than a decade. that there was going to be about 40 million people applying for 150 million people applying for about 40 million jobs. The reverse of that is, is that as we, even the most basic level skills, even those frontline skills or jobs required better skills, minimal, even minimal digital skills. So every job required a more advanced skill. I think you’re, the ratio was something like 50 million people would be applying for 120 some million jobs. So it, you know, if you look at where we are now before the recession, we had 160 million jobs approximately right out of that, you know, 40 million. you were basically predicting that about 40 million of those jobs after all of a sudden done would be lower skilled and 120 million would be, at least more advanced skill jobs.

Speaker 2: but the ratio of people applying was going to reverse and overnight, you know, we thought this would be an, an evolution and everybody hoped it would be a slow evolution. We’d have time and we didn’t have to do the training and next year we’ll put it into our budget and all of a sudden overnight everybody’s home. I can’t tell you how many times in the last, well I could tell you in the last five years that I had less, I can count on one hand the number of requests I had or contacts leads on my website, which we do. Preemployment testing. how many people requested digital literacy skills No one, I mean we, people want to know where they were they proficient in word and Excel and could they type in data entry. But it mostly was, people felt pretty good at screening out the people who had no skills, but they wanted to know how quickly can people do it or how advanced they were.

Speaker 2: And in word and Excel and things, all of a sudden I’m getting a request or two a day from companies that are saying we need to test our employees for digital literacy. And I always ask them what that means. And they’re talking some very, very basic skills. And I think overnight what your prediction was is what, where we were headed. came true. And, and that’s why we’re here. So there are a couple of questions here. and I know we want to make this real for people because they’re struggling. So some are in small business, so maybe nonprofits, I may be with NGOs, some may be with government. So I know we’ve got a really, really diverse group of people here and some, some of you may just be kind of interested listeners. what are some of the things, let’s first tackle the employer.

Speaker 2: What are some of the things that an employer can do And then, but I know you’ve been promoting your retain and they want you to talk a little bit about that. Is that certainly going to be a theme on all the sessions going forward and, and whether people participate them in or not. I mean, it’s certainly going to be the one way out of that. So let’s first address the employer issue. What are some things companies should be doing and employers should be doing right now Smaller, large and, and since most of our businesses are small and those are certainly the ones that are struggling, what can they do right now to help, up-skill or rescale their employees One of the strategies that I see at work in communities across the United States is to collaboration by small employers through a regional organization that they belong to. I call them a retain a regional talent innovation network. This is a nonprofit that’s set up as an Alliance. We clean business and communities in order to help small and large and medium businesses to, to develop the talent in their community

Speaker 4: That does not exist, to fill these vacant jobs as well as to replace individuals who will be retiring and also to work with the local economic development people to attract new business into a community.

Speaker 4: They work through both the higher education post-secondary programs, meaning to your colleges, certificate programs, union apprenticeship programs, and four year institutions. But they also set up information on careers in elementary and secondary schools in elementary schools. It’s mainly to help parents as well as students to be exposed to the wide range and world of jobs that exist in most communities. Now, not every community is going to become Silicon Valley. Not every community is going to be launching space shovels. Not every community has a huge major medical centers branded, but every community does have specific business sectors that they want to support and expand and they have physical advantages. They have, potential universities, educational systems, the transportation networks that might help them to attract new industry, a new business sector into their area if they had it workforce

Speaker 4: What I’ve seen again and again is that companies now locate where they confined the talent as well as some of these other factors of transportation. There’s tax issues, there are other issues as well, but they need a pool of talent. So by educating parents and students starting in elementary school and telling them about what the jobs of the 21st century are and getting them interested. Then these same businesses support career Academy high schools that are a blend of liberal arts and specific classes and information that support those sectors. Could be the hospitality sector, the banking sector, automotive sector, it, whatever it is in your community, which contributes mainly to, your current and hopefully your future economic development. So for one of the concerns that I’ve got is obviously a lot of businesses that are just rambling. They’re trying to it out. Whereas,

Speaker 2: You know, they’ve got people, they reckon they may even recognize the need that they, they need to upgrade their skills. on a, on a short term basis. I mean, and again, I can give a simple solution. I know we offer w we, we offer an LMS, and we have 2,700 online courses. you know, from as simple as how people can learn to use word and Excel to, can they lead in the, can they manage and communicate and build teams and project manage projects I think, and they’re short burst and, and so, you know, getting people up to speed has changed a great deal. And again, many of that is there’s literally three to $6 a month per person. So, again, if you have a hundred, 200 employees, it adds up, but you can, you can really localize that. Yes, that’s really important. Beyond saying, Hey, just go up to Coursera or online or work with somebody like myself. what are some other immediate solutions that a company might do

Speaker 3: Well, the federal government a few years ago changed the national workforce employment act so that companies could work with local workforce boards to help them fill their vacant jobs. And in many communities now though not all the workforce board will has the ability to take a look at the people unemployed in their area and take a look at the vacant jobs that exist and partner with a business to pay half of the cost of training someone into that job and the government will pay the other half. This is a major step forward simply because before only nonprofits and government agencies, could, could utilize that type of an approach. So this is another area that companies can take advantage of. But again, I emphasize to all of you that short term fixes here are, is not what we need. We need serious discussion of longterm availability of skilled workers. 50 million people were retire in this decade. Then numbers of high school graduates who are entering the workforce or going into postsecondary education who have advanced reading and math skills, meaning 12th grade or better, that most new jobs will require that pay well with benefits. Those numbers are limited. We’ll talk more in depth about this in future, programs that we’re going to do here. But something has to be done at the local community level to change that perspective that what worked in the past. We can muddle through again add,

Speaker 4: We can do this. No you won’t be able to. You’re going to lose advanced jobs and the U S could lose advanced technologies to other countries who develop a workforce that is capable of meeting the needs of those particular business sectors. We all can see how fast technology has advanced that is not going to, that is not going to change. We can expect further advances. His chips become more and more powerful, but it takes workers who can read right and have good interpersonal communication skills as well as specialized career training and postsecondary that companies need to continue once they’re hired because as things things are changing so rapidly that the education system right now is just plain out of date. Not for everyone but for the majority of our workers and our companies are not picking up the Slack. It is not a question that companies are the sole responsibility to reign employees up to speed.

Speaker 4: They aren’t. Our society needs to do it and our society is not doing it. This is not a political issue. This is a societal problem and a cultural problem because you see we could and we can do a better job. We know how to train workers and we certainly know how to better educate children in school if we have parental support. We have well-trained, dedicated teachers in math and science and reading as well as we have principals who know how to manage their teachers well and are given the opportunity to individualize instruction within their school. But business still has a partnership with other nonprofit organizations that exist in order to continue that process. Lifelong learning is not just for the professional, the so called professional. You know, if you’re an auto technician today in the dealership and you take your car and to that technician, that technician needs a reading ability at the 16th grade level to read the schematics and manuals and computers in order to figure out why the damn computers in your car does don’t work right and be able to problem solve with it.

Speaker 4: These aren’t dummy jobs. The idea that service workers have inferior minds and carpenters and plumbers and bricklayers, electricians, they just don’t need that much education. I have news for you. Those days are over. My father was a carpenter contractor for many years and by the time he retired when he was 80 he always said to me ad, it’s amazing to me the products that now are available that have come online in the last 20 years. This is a very complex need and in electricity. Our building just put in a new electrical conduit into this a hundred year old building. Very complex, very difficult. Those electricians have gone through extensive training and apprenticeship in order to get there and those needs are going to continue. I talked to people in the unions and how much of their work now is growing out and correcting the mistakes of other people who didn’t have that training and education and now they have to redo all of the electrical systems and buildings.

Speaker 2: Well, the pandemic certainly laid there. I mean a lot of the things that we were talking about but overnight laid bare a lot of the vulnerabilities and these skill gaps. you know, and I think one is there may be one of the, if there’s some silver linings in this, that, that we appreciate, a lot of people appreciate other people that we took for granted that, you know, even a computer tech, Oh he’s just a geek and he doesn’t have any of these skills and all of a sudden people were forced to go home and figure out all this technology themselves. And the joke, you know, for, for years, you and I have been around a long enough when the VCR came out and it used to be the joke that you needed your kids to pro, you know, stop it from the flashing light.

Speaker 2: Well there’s still people that never moved beyond that because they don’t have to. But also I’ll literally overnight cause they go into work and somebody would handle that overnight. They were responsible for figuring out how to get online or how to get on a call like this or join that or deal with their bandwidth problems or get multiple, multiple people online at the same time. And there was nobody to turn to. You couldn’t turn to anybody else. Maybe you can turn to your kids to help figure it out. But but you know, basically people were left on their own. So overnight this minimum was left. And, and again, I know we’re going to talk about, in some of the other sessions about the education, you know, how’s that going to change you know, and almost every conversation leads up to what’s going to happen with a traditional colleges.

Speaker 2: you know, I wrote a chapter in my book, which was about credentialing. What’s going to be the basis potential in our, how are people going to earn credentials And what’s going to be more important is that you, you have a number of degrees or you took a recent certification or what was your proficiency in something rather than, I completed eight years of school and I have multiple degrees. So, you know, I heard this on another webinar I was sorta in between, in between my sessions today and they described the world we’re living in right now is a, is a facet. If you looked at a raw diamond and it’s all these facets and they’re all irregular and you as you turn it, you can see all the different facets. We’re literally standing on one facet, except we have to connect the dots. We have to make them all work because you just can’t fix the one facet.

Speaker 2: You can’t shine it up and make it nice and clear and buff it up and don’t do anything with all the rest. And as soon as you know, the earth turns a little bit or rotates, or now there’s another facet that’s a center of attention. So that we’re talking about education, we’re talking about job skills, we’re talking work, we’re talking about jobs. And you know, you, you came up with the title, I think that you sent me with future of employee employment. So you know, a lot of it’s focused on the future of jobs, but the problem isn’t going to be creating jobs. There’s going to be a lot of jobs out there. It’s going to be how do we get people employed I think beyond that, what I did a twist on it was the future of employability is everybody’s going to have to carry this cache, this portfolio around the skills. And those are going to be in flux. And the more skills you have in the more advanced States are, is really what’s going to be your credentials. And therefore that trades person. what that frontline person at the gross was the person working, be behind the bakery, you know, bakery cases, you know, they’re basically going to have to have better skills and the more skills they have, the better and more secure the jobs going to be.

Speaker 4: Well, I have many stories to share with all of you over the next few sessions, but again, this is something that I believe and our research shows that is going to be solved first, regionally. It, it’s not going to be solved by the government by itself following trillions of dollars into training programs it’s going to get, and no one company, even the huge giants by themselves cannot solve this problem. It is going to take collaboration, collaboration between people who would be pointing at each other as the culprit. It’s the educators, it’s the parents, it’s the business people. It’s the politicians. I have seen these regional talent innovation systems, whether they call the Vermilion advantage, the new North high school, and there are a thousand of them across the United States. Some are well supported by business and their communities. Others are languishing and struggling to get more support. Right.

Speaker 2: Are you familiar with, Judy, I, put a question in here. Are you aware of the

Speaker 3: Mentor internship internship program No, I’m not. I’d like to be, dude, if you’re available, if you want to talk a little bit and share a little bit about that, just put it in the chat that you’re OK and I’ll unmute you or you can unmute yourself, if you want to do that because, that was something else that I’d like to get Ed’s input and hear a little bit more about it. So can you hear me Yeah, I’m doing great. South wire is using the German, methodology, in that they actually started elementary school by doing school tours and stuff like that. And they work in conjunction with the elementary in the, middle school, the schools in the area. and they have paid internships in high school where the kids can learn different skills to work in their company, in their plants they produce, they’re one of the largest wire producers in the world and they are located in Carrollton, Georgia.

Speaker 3: But it’s one of the most sophisticated mentorship and internship programs that I’ve ever heard of. And it goes all the way through the colleges. They even have, partnerships with West Georgia college, West Georgia university, and also some of the technical schools. And they go into the schools and they teach too. but it’s a phenomenal program and then a huge retention because of it. Because a lot of kids think that if you’re going to go to work for a manufacturing company, it’s going to be a dirty job. And what their big thing, how it all got started was to show kids that manufacturing wasn’t dirty anymore. Technology knowledge. It’s all technology foundries. Right, right. Well, Judy, I’d like to learn more about that program and if you will contact me, email me at Imperial Corp at Juno dot com or go on our website, just Imperial Corp com and certainly you’re free to call me in Chicago at three. One, two, six, six, four, five one nine six. And that’s true for all of you who are listening. Can you give me that the last, the last numbers again Three ones. Three one, two, six, six, four, five, one, nine, six. Okay. I can send you the, the information for the person that heads up their, workforce development stuff. Very good. Thank you Judy. Okay, that’s duty. And

Speaker 2: I’m just putting that into, let me see. I guess I need my glasses on here way too small in there. no.com. So there’s ads information that’s out there. I have it in the chat. I think that was right. Maybe. Yeah, Elaine or, or you can check that ad. there’s a couple of other things here. and I know you’ve got a couple of, you have a couple of your clients or people that are familiar with you in the retain work. So somebody chimed in, but there was some, George answered a question earlier. and I think maybe this’ll be a, we have a couple minutes here. Maybe closing aside is how do you bring the groups together I mean, and I understand you’ve got retained, and so conceptually you got the structure, you got the business model, but how does the conversation start like that

Speaker 2: Because I’ve been, you know, for 25 years, I love, I pride in this career. I’ve been in this world and I’ve been involved with workforce development and they’ve evolved with the chamber and economic development and workforce development. And, there there’s lots of fits and starts these conversations. What have you, so let me ask you, what have you found successful to bring the people together and then make it effective Because there are so many of these groups that came together and get mired down in bureaucracy, so mature material. So, you know, and maybe two or three minutes, can you share your, your lessons of how can you move through this quickly

Speaker 4: I’m going to go through this in greater depth in, in another, segment of these programs. But I can tell you what I have found, over the last 20 years writing about this and consulting on it, is that groups will contact me who, either have a program that is, underfunded and under appreciated within their region, or they’re interested in starting. It could be through a chamber of commerce. It could be through a workforce board. It could be through a, a Goodwill industries or, some other, nonprofit community service group. And they see the need to get people to come together. And, the reason they’re usually doing this is people are the young people are leaving the community and going elsewhere. Small businesses are closing and the tax base in their region is declining and they want to turn it around and they, they see the houses on fire.

Speaker 4: So, many times, with this, we, they’ll do a regional summit where, the awareness of this problem is brought to the fore for all the community leaders, people across the community. And they are given the awareness that this is not a problem just here in Ohio or in Montana or in New York state or California or wherever they live. But this is a problem all over the entire United States. And it’s a global problem. And other communities already are addressing it. So what we’ve done is first we make them aware. We show them how other communities have set up a local brand, a nonprofit that does not attempt to duplicate what’s already there, but tries to get people to work together and there’s the key. Then we work with that group to learn how to collaborate, to get the people to talk to each other, to talk to each other in, in a language that they all can understand.

Speaker 4: Not a business language or an education language or a political language, but to translate what they need in a way that they can form a common vision for their community. These are Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. These are people in trade. These are people in healthcare, et cetera, so that the community can put together, again, a more comprehensive, updated way to educate people for the variety of jobs that need to be filled in their community. And not just one company with a big program. So all the healthcare, everyone should go into health care. No, no. Everyone should go into manufacturing. No, everyone should go into it. That’s not the issue because children have different skills and and needs and the issues as do adults. So it’s a collaborative effort to help the small, medium, and bigger businesses fulfill a variety of jobs. And once they have the vision, where do they start

Speaker 4: They can’t do everything at once. It takes time to set this up and also to come up with the funding because businesses have to put their money where their mouth is. They can’t just complain, they cannot find talent and skilled people. And yet on the other hand do nothing about it. And the other, on the other side of the coin, the, public and private school systems also need to work with them to better rearrange their curriculums and educational programs to produce the talent at the other end of the pipeline. It’s a pipeline problem. Same thing with the higher education institutions. We’re talking again, we’re talking about significant systemic change,

Speaker 2: Right So I’m going to put you, I’m going to volunteer you for something because I know we’re, we’re closely, we’re getting pretty quick to run out of time here. We’ve, we’ve, you know, we really appreciate everybody’s spending an hour with us today. if anybody’s interested, I mean, one of the, one of the aspects of, of awarenesses is sometimes having somebody like ed or myself, you know, or somebody in our network, present to a local group and now you can do this virtually. And basically being able to, you know, say here, here’s, here are the facts. These, these aren’t trends. This isn’t the future anymore. The future is now, you know, it’s arrived overnight and you know, here is why you need to do it and here’s the first steps and sort of accelerate that conversation to why it needs to be done and that there are ways to do it. And certainly the retain model, is, you know, as we’ve been working on this for years and a lot of success stories and as Judy said, even something like Southwire, but again, it’s been done in, in manufacturing has been done in certain areas, but this could be universal.

Speaker 4: I saw, I see here that, I’m Deanna, you talked about the great uncoupling and right, right. I’d love to talk to you about that on Deanna please. please give me a call. I’m aware of this. And the retains basically are trying to do what to recouple people within societies and get them out of their silos.

Speaker 2: Again,

I want to thank ed, that was a great presentation that I’ve been getting texts and comments and other things on the side here that everybody was, you know, very, you know, really enjoyed I that a lot.

Speaker 3: Yeah. You’re looking for part two, the failure of current talent strategies. That’s what we’ll be doing in June. We’ll talk about why the ways in which we have found our talent until jobs, what’s happened to it, what the fourth industrial revolution has done. And we’re going to talk about demographics, worldwide demographics, right.

Speaker 1: And I think you can see that here on the slide. Hopefully you can see that on the, on the screen, that the, here’s the dates and in the chat I did put, the link here. You can see that it’s a bit.life or it’s less jobs 2030 dash two, which is best to use for the second version of this. so if you click on that now, you’ll have the event, but I will also send that to you in an email and a follow up email to this with some of the other information and Ed’s information. but I appreciate everybody taking the time. And then one final thing, again, I put up a lot of resources for you here.

there are a number of things related to trust in the workplace, building a culture of trust. also remote.

Speaker 1: there’s a remote worker blueprint. There’s a free download book on remote work, a blueprint there so you can go to bit.ly/ free-resources-2020. I’ll put that in the email that goes out. But again, we, we had a really nice attendance today. Spread the word, tell your friends, your colleagues. Hopefully you’ll be back in June. If you want to register now and ensure you got a spot, because we do have a limited spots on our conference line, go to https://bit.ly/jobs2030-2. It’s great working with you Ed it took us 20 years. You and I can figure out how to, how to do a really solid collaboration. And I think this is timing’s good. We’ve been, we’ve been working together for a long time to make this happen and this is our moment.

Speaker 2: And appreciate it. Thanks everybody. please let us know. Communicate with us. I’m very active on LinkedIn and Twitter a lot more than than ed is. If you have any questions, comments, follow through recommendations for future, you want us to capture another topic, let us know until then. Be safe. Everybody. Keep a distancing. Take your precautions. and hopefully we’ll see you in a couple of weeks. Take care.