This was a focus for Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan when she spoke at the Connecticut Workforce Summit at the AquaTurf Club in Plantsville on Oct. 6.
People development “is a team sport, not an individual sport,” she told more than 200 leaders from public sector, community organizations and employers.
“A lot of employers think they have to do it on their own,” she says. “We’re all in this together and collaboration is key to driving solutions forward.”
Ton-Quinlivan [pictured above] is a nationally recognized author and thought leader on human development who has worked in the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors.
The summit was hosted by CBIA, its ReadyCT and CONNSTEP subsidiaries, and Social Venture Partners Connecticut, and sponsored by General Dynamics Electric Boat.
record job offers
The 2022 Survey of Connecticut Businesses by CBIA and Marcum showed that 85% of Connecticut employers are struggling to find and retain workers, with 39% citing a lack of qualified applicants as the top impediment to growth.
In July, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 113,000 job openings in Connecticut — 5,000 more than at the same time a year ago.
If every unemployed person in Connecticut were hired tomorrow, there would still be 35,200 open positions.
But if every unemployed person in the country were to be hired tomorrow, there would still be 35,200 vacancies.
“What a dissonance between the workers who need work and the employers who need workers and can’t find each other,” Ton-Quinlivan said.
So what can be done to solve this crisis?
cooperation
Ton-Quinlivan said it is about finding strategies to get adults back into the labor market and to meet educational needs.
To do this, she discussed how the work of three groups of stakeholders – employers, educators and community-based organizations – must come together and work together.
She described a problem she calls “fire hose vs. garden hose.” The fire hose is the number of students prepared for the job market and the garden hose is the vacancies and needs of employers.
The challenge is to match the fire hose and the garden hose and bring together the right people with the right skills at the right time.
“The goal here is that when combined, you can create a reliable, high-quality, diverse talent pool by coming together rather than having to do it alone,” she said.
“Employers need to have the lead voice because it’s about your jobs, right?
“It is important for employers to work together in a consortium and not to go to work alone.”
educational options
She said the goal of a consortium is to pool jobs and find similar roles with similar skills.
Ton-Quinlivan said broader collaboration will “make it easier for education and others to play.”
She noted that the pandemic has opened up more opportunities for education, including greater flexibility in bundling and unbundling curricula and creating programs that maintain quality while improving readiness.
“If you want diversity to exist in the talent pool, the beginning of the people development pipeline needs to be diverse.”
Futuro Health by Ton Quinlivan.
Community-based organizations are better positioned at the local level “than any business, or frankly even the education sector,” Ton-Quinlivan noted.
In her best-selling WorkforceRX, she wrote, “If you want diversity in the talent pool, the beginning of the workforce development pipeline must be diverse.
“This means that diversity outreach needs to be done early on. Public employment agencies and community-based organizations can do a better job by reaching deeper and broader into communities to raise awareness of jobs than most companies have the appetite for.”
an ecosystem
Ton-Quinlivan emphasized that employers, the education sector and community-based organizations all need to work in one ecosystem.
One way to do that is to think regionally.
“Perhaps it makes sense for regions to play together,” she said, “rather than individual institutions and partners working together.
“Then the K-12 institutions map the common regional economy because, as you know, most people stay in the regional economy.”
Ton-Quinlivan said it’s important to tailor Pathway programs to a region’s economy by “identifying which sectors, industries are important.”
Collaboration between employers, educators and community-based organizations helps provide entry and pathways into a career.
“Education is not unique,” Ton-Quinlivan said. “It’s not early, but it must be a series of continuous upgrades throughout your life.”
bring back adults
A quarter of respondents to the CBIA/Marcum poll called for more skilled worker training, while 23% supported additional education and trade school opportunities.
So how can educational institutions help adults re-enter the labor market?
Ton-Quinlivan said it’s helpful to look at how innovation leaders are changing workflows and how those workflows impact skills.
“Adults don’t want degrees. But they are interested in developing their skills.”
Ton-Quinlivan
“Adults aren’t in the mood to graduate,” she said. “But they are interested in developing their skills.”
She said the key is creating ups and downs for adults so they are ready to return to education.
“If they’re not ready to graduate, how do you get them into the skills that are relevant to you?” she asked.
next generation workforce
In terms of fostering the development of the next generation of workers, Ton-Quinlivan said the introduction of career exploration in middle schools is important so that “students here in Connecticut learn about the breadth of a broad world of work.”
For high school and college students, it’s all about work experience.
“This is a defective area in the workforce pipeline,” she said.
Ton-Quinlivan called workplace experience options “a broken area in the workforce pipeline.”
“Employers, only you can provide work experience. So if there’s one thing you want to do, think about partnering with your colleges to provide work experience.
“When you have a pool of talent, work together to build a pool to compete at the time of hiring.
“And when you have that person at your company who gets to know your company as an intern, you have a competitive advantage when it comes to nabbing that dreamer or that dream candidate.”
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