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Credly Strategist Shares Secrets to Workforce Credentials
- 1. Brenda Perea bperea@credly.com @pereaink @Credly #WorkforceRelevant Credly Strategist Shares Secrets to Workforce Credentials Kim Larson-Cooney kimlc55@gmail.com Yvonne Gilstrap Yvonne.Gilstrap@cccs.edu
- 3. The “Communications Gap” is Real, Too EMPLOYERS Job DescriptionResume EMPLOYEESEDUCATORS & TRAINERS Certificate #WorkforceRelevant
- 4. Source: Competency Matters / Wonderlic https://www.competencymatters.org/soft-skills-infographics Employers Prefer Verified Skills & Digital Credentials
- 5. Effective Institution- Employer Partnerships What are the most important considerations when starting to develop partnerships to close the gaps? What should each know about the other? #WorkforceRelevant
- 6. Learner EmployerSchool 15,000 Advanced Manufacturing Jobs Unfilled in CO Connecting Verified Competencies to Jobs #WorkforceRelevant
- 7. Building a Foundation of Employer Engagement 1. Build a Team of Credential Champions 2. Identify Priority Industries or Employers 3. Create an Onboarding Program 4. Issue Credentials 5. Conduct After-Action Reviews #WorkforceRelevant
- 8. Yvonne Gilstrap Colorado's First and Existing Industry Program Manager
- 9. Macro or System Wide Employer Engagement
- 10. Why Employers Care #WorkforceRelevant • Strategy for non-credit grants are an extension of typical work • Facilitate the culture of recognition within an organization that will: • Reinforce employer engagement • Build employee value • Career development of the employee
- 11. POLL QUESTION Does your institution currently have a strategic employer engagement program?
- 12. Kim Larson-Cooney Former Executive Director of Workforce and Community Programs at Arapahoe Community College
- 13. Micro or Institutional Level Employer Engagement
- 14. • Networking at industry events • Engaging HR and stakeholders • Identifying new channels to communicate with employers #WorkforceRelevant How to Engage Employers
- 16. Resources • The Employer Engagement Field Guide • Certificates: Gateway to Gainful Employment and College Degrees • Colorado's Forgotten Middle-Skills Jobs
Hinweis der Redaktion
- Nationally there is a perception of a skills gap and most recently the Business Round Table released their 2017 report Work in Progress, validating the U.S. has a lack of skilled workers which is impacting the national economy. NFIB’s July 2017 Report on Small Business Optimism Index noted that of the group surveyed, 60 percent reported hiring or trying to hire, but 52 percent reported few or no qualified applicants for the positions they were trying to fill. The issue of finding qualified applicants is sever in industries such as construction and manufacturing. For instance in Colorado, in 2014 there was an estimated 15,000 unfilled advanced manufacturing jobs which were predicted to grow to 45,000 by 2016. Why? Employers were struggling to find employees with the competencies they needed. The problem was that employers were searching for applicants with specific skills, abilities and competencies but Colorado Community College System transcripts only listed grades, course titles, certificates and degrees. Employers had no way to match the transcript information to the skills and abilities needed for those open positions.
- As evidenced in Colorado, there is a communication gap between Higher education and Employers in conveying what a student can ”do” and what is visible on the student’s HE credentials. While HE documents learning with certificates and transcripts, applicants use resumes to document skills and employers are seeking to fill posted job descriptions. While on the surface, it seems we are all speaking the same language, what we are really trying to document is what can a person actually do on the job site. Sparked by an employer at a regional sector summit where all employers discuss the industry, challenges and opportunities in the context of workforce needs in 6, 12, and 18 months. This employer stood up and stated that “Your students’ can’t do math on my manufacturing line and are costing me money” This was his perception despite the fact that all of our certificates have at least 1 math course, and our AAS degree has at least 3 math courses. There was definitely a disconnect between our perception of our students ability to perform and this employer’s experience. We also need to understand, while businesses exist in a rapidly changing environment and need to make rapid and agile workforce corrections, HE is much slower to respond to shifts in workforce demand because of the time and effort it takes in changing their accredited programs. This timeline incongruence also contributes to the communication gap. Questions HE keeps asking themselves in tackling workforce issues include: What is the Problem we’re trying to solve? What is our Solution? Why is it Different? What do we hope to achieve? Who can we partner with? where’s the value-Economically, Socially, and for the Learner/Employer? It’s past the time to find alternative ways to meet employer demands, and digital badges provide that alternative. Digital badges can be used in a number of ways inside and outside your institution or organization. The skills gap has focused employers’ attention on a desire to maximize and manage their talent resources. To an employer, a digital badge can validate what an applicant can actually do and expands the ability of industry employers to expand their workforce or improve their workforce’s skills. Effective management of skills and abilities depends upon validated and verifiable knowledge, skills and abilities. The exchange of transparent, portable and data rich credentials, digital badges, is the currency of choice in the marketplace for knowledge and skills. Workforce driven badges provide the skill transparency employers need and learners scaffold within their career pathway.
- Our partner Wonderlic completed a survey and they discovered 60% of employers agreed that they would be more inclined to interview graduates that had job specific skills badges on their resumes and 86.6% agreed that local educators should provide their students with job specific badges that VERIFY Skills. This all seems very straight forward. However, for HE these simple requests take time, manpower and a paradigm shift from “business as usual” When HE starts to engage employers in the education to workforce pathway, they begin to connect skills to opportunity. Badge earners are empowered to show what they can do through a digital badge, employers can know what badge earners can do whether they are applicants or existing employees. Industry driven digital badges provide a powerful and employer-friendly complement to grades and other information traditionally found on a college transcript. Students have the advantage of seeing a clear pathway of progression which will help them gain employment and reskill and upskill as the workforce needs change and evolve giving them the opportunity to work and advance in their chosen pathway.
- Viable digital badge ecosystems rely on an exchange of perceived value or “currency” between three different parties: badge issuer, badge earner and badge consumer. Questions to be answered when engaging employers in digital badges include: Why document and award a badge for knowledge, skills and abilities? How does the badge benefit those who earn the badge? What Additionally, if we think about communication of performance of skills and abilities, it is important to understand where your credentials will be “consumed”. What is the driving force for developing digital credentials in the space? Can you emphasize key data which helps inform employers and industry about the need for a “different” approach to skill recognition. What are the major opportunities for or drivers of job growth now and in the future specific to areas of skills identification. Will consumption of credentials be dependent on labor market numbers? Industry hiring? Or will economic factors of the region impact the ability of employers to sustain or grow their workforce? What strategies are in-place for creating a new industry workforce or expanding an existing industry? Are there companies moving into or out of the region. Remember, analyzing the external industry and employment arena is part of the ecosystem of digital credentials. To be effective currency, credentials will need someplace where credentials show value, and most times that value is determined externally. does the badge convey to businesses, industries, or institutions? Critical areas which need to be addressed with developing employer centric digital credentials include: 1. internal and external stakeholder buy-in- Digital badges cannot function in the vacuum of Higher Ed. They require not only input, but also buy-in by employers to be successful. 2. Focus on the Learner/Earner: in HE it is important that our participants are our number one priority, and use of digital badges ensuring that the education we provide is valuable to them in the community and the workforce. 3. In order to get whole scale adoption, it is crucial to create a credential that employers seek out. Starting with the end in mind is what creates a viable digital badge ecosystem which benefits the badge earners, badge issuers and badge consumers.
- So if I can take a minute to explain how this whole process played out in one badge at CCCS. We needed to find a way to connect our AAS in Advanced Manufacturing student with one of the 15000 unfilled advanced manufacturing jobs. To make that connection, we used the sector summit model to have employers understand what skills, abilities and competencies were needed in a specific job: CNC Milling Operations. We then backward designed those competencies into our existing program and courses, and highlighted where those skills were learned, performed and assessed with a digital badge. Student were empowered to talk about their performance, employers could verify their performance and the communications gap was filled with a digital badge.
- So I have talked a lot about employer engagement and digital badges, but I want to pause and give you 5 strategies which framed the work in Colorado. Build a Team of Credential Champions—Luckily today you will get to hear from 2 of those champions and their own efforts in engaging employers. Identify Priority Industries or Employers–-there was no better identifier than the projected 45,000 unfilled advanced manufacturing jobs which were impacting our state economy. Create an Onboarding Program—I knew I could not do this alone we brought everyone one to the table, faculty, career advisors, K-12, 2-year, 4-year, workforce, industry reps, small, medium and large business, economic development boards, chamber of commerce and department of labor. I mean we had everyone at the table. And this required 3 phases of communication: Badge Awareness, Badge Interest and Badge Involved. Issue Credentials—through the series of sector summits, we identified workforce skills 6months, 12, months and 18 months out and worked to backwards design those skills and abilities into our programs and made them transparent with digital credentials. Conduct After-Action Reviews—And we turned a critical eye on each of our projects, to see where the pinch points were, the barriers to adoption and implementation and what we could do better. I am a big believer in sharing knowledge, so Credly gifted me the opportunity to write up Colorado’s model of employer engagement in a Field Guide. You can download it for free off the Credly site. I will give the link at the end of the presentation.
- Now that I have set the stage for employer engagement in digital credentials. I would like to take the opportunity to introduce you Yvonne Gilstrap, Colorado Community College System’s Colorado First and Existing Industry Program Manager. Yvonne manages a yearly grant of $4.5 million dollars to develop training partners to expand their abilities to engage employers in workforce development. Yvonne, can you tell me a little about the CFEI grant and how at the system level, the grant empowers companies to engage with higher education to make intentional decisions to regarding the progression of reskilling or upskilling employees through the use of targeted training and the benefits of digital credentials.
- YVONNE Colorado Community College System Engagement of companies - Colorado First & Existing Industry Job Training Program – working through our community colleges Site visits with granted companies Discussions of grant training and general company training needs Training competencies and credentials Requirements needed by employees to upskill in organization Possible new training courses with community colleges Beginnings of building a relationship with companies
- YVONNE, so what I hear about the macro or system level employer engagement is that some key points include: Helping an employer develop a culture of recognition while building training that: Re-enforces employer engagement at a higher level Builds employee value Focused on the development of the individual person On question I have you seem to do this process effortlessly, however my first thought is how would one of our audience members begin a relationship with a company? Describe future steps to listen to the company and industry training needs
- All Institution wide or department specific? Yes No I don’t know
- Alright Kim, we heard from Yvonne on a top level approach to employer engagement. You though, were a one of CCCS’ colleges as the Executive Director of Workforce and Community Programs engaging employers in everything from credit to non-credit training. Can you tell me how at the Micro or at the college level, employer engagement was different or the same?
- KIM: Development of external resources and potential clients Development of an internal team--BIP team-Business Industry Partnership Process development
- Kim, I will also ask you, How did you begin the conversations around completions, certifications and digital badges? We all know that when discussing digital badge it is important to identify the correct stakeholders and decision makers, how did you go about identifying those key people? What surprises did you find when engaging with employers for training and credentialing?
- Let’s dig deeper into the models mentioned in the first part of the webinar, so it seems that both of you agree, the key to employer engagement is for HE to develop trust and credibility in dealing with employers, and key to that is to not only hear what employers are saying but to truly listen to employer/industry’s needs. So how did you identify the stakeholders in the company HE needed to listen to? Was it HR, Was it the CEO? Who exactly were the stakeholders? And more importantly how did you identify the decision makers who had the authority to really engage with you when talking about identifying skills within their company? What other channels did you identify that allowed you to increase communication with employers?