News: Steps urged to create more competitive work force

By Jenny Munro
Published Oct. 3, 2010, in The Greenville News (Subscription required)

The issue on everybody’s mind is jobs – how to create them, how to find them, how to fill them and how to connect the qualified job seeker with the employer with a job.

Minor Shaw, president of Micco Corp. and a volunteer with United Way of Greenville County, challenged Upstate legislators, employers, business groups, work force development experts and community organizations attending “Solving the Puzzle: Addressing the Workforce Skills Gap” — a conference hosted Friday by the Upstate Legislative Caucus — to take three actions:

• Support WorkKeys legislation, perhaps requiring it as a partof receiving a GED.
• Free up discretionary funds on the state level for innovative workforce development programs at the local level.
• Coordinate and collaborate regionally to develop awork-ready labor pool.

“Our goals are jobs, jobs, jobs,” said S.C. Rep. Dan Hamilton, chairman of the Upstate Legislative Caucus, to the nearly 200 attendees. “Today is a call to action. We must collaborate within the 10-county Upstate region to raise the bar.”

But the Upstate must create a work force ready to take more of the more highly skilled jobs being created by employers, said John Baker, director of Greenville Works, a collaboration of 12 organizations working with workforce development and company retention.

“Industry is the driver here,” he said.

“Wages have not kept pace with the rising cost of housing, healthcare and education,” Shaw said, “and skill levels have not grown to meet the changing needs in the 21st century economy.”

The Upstate “needs to create a regional competitive advantage that must start with a highly trained and effective work force,” she said.

Jobs are changing, Baker said, with more beginning as temporary and then changing to permanent positions and many requiring higher skills, more flexibility and better problem solving skills. He said of 600 retention calls his organization has made in the past few years, two-thirds reported problems with the skill levels of entry-level applicants.

The issue subsided some during the recession but even with a state unemployment rate of more than 10 percent and a Greenville County rate of a little less than 10 percent, a lack of skills is again becoming a challenge for employers, he said.

“The work force in general has not kept up with these requirements,” Baker said. “Lower skilled jobs are gone. They have gone offshore.”

Laura Harmon, Greenville Works project manager, explained WorkKeys, a work-based skills assessment and remediation program that is helpful to employers as well as job candidates who receive verification of measured skills. The state has created a Career Readiness Certificate based on three of the WorkKeys assessments.

Representatives of four companies using the assessment gave it high marks for shortening the hiring process, helping find qualified candidates, reducing turnover and improving productivity.

Several speakers suggested that WorkKeys be introduced in the high schools in the ninth or tenth grades so students would understand their skill level, the skills needed for desired jobs and have time to improve their skills if needed.

However, “employers are in the driver’s seat here,” Harmon said. If they require, request or recognize WorkKeys or Career Readiness Certificates, job candidates will be more likely to obtain the certification prior to searching for a job.

S.C. Rep. Dwight Loftis said the most critical need of the Upstate and all of South Carolina is ample supply of well-qualified candidates ready to work. Large employers have begun using WorkKeys. The challenge now, he said, is to encourage the participation of smaller employers.