Where the Jobs Are 2016 by Volume One Magazine

Get ting that perfect job is like hit ting your target. It’s a challenge at first. You need to learn the right skills, find your balance, work hard, and keep your eyes open for traffic. It doesn’t always work out the first time, and falling off can be painful and discouraging. But don’t

despair: Volume One’s special jobs section is here to give you the resources, statistics, and advice you need to take the training wheels off, shift into the right gear, and cruise down the road of success.

W R ITE R S Barbara Arnold, Mark Gunderman • E D ITO R S Tom Giffey & Eric Christenson • D E S I G N Serena Wagner

B R O U G HT TO YO U I N PAR T BY

CHIPPEWA VALLEY LABOR MARKET SKILLS GAP SURVEY 2015

TACKLING WOR KFORCE CHALLE NGES agencies, economists, and educators weigh in on filling the growing holes in the Chippewa Valley’s workforce WORDS: BARBARA ARNOLD

hen speaking out about the employment picture in our area, Chippewa Valley leaders appear to be bandying about a lot of “C-words” these days: “crisis,” “challenge,” and “competition.” However, they are also banding together in a spirit embodied in three other C words: “collaboration,” “cooperation,” and “community.” They are creating new coalitions among business, industry, manufacturing, health care, education, government, and nonprofits. They are carving out new ways to prepare and share talent in the Chippewa Valley’s hiring climate. Scott Hodek, regional economist for the state Department of Workforce Development, helped lay out the issues our region faces for “Tackling Our Workforce Challenges,” a panel discussion sponsored by the Eau Claire Area Chamber of Commerce Friday, June 17, at the Clarion H o t e l . Being an economist, H o d e k b a c k e d up every point he made with charts and graphs to emphasize the severity and the opportuHodek nity of the Chippewa Valley’s current situation: 1. The economy here is growing, but it’s moderate growth, like the entire nation’s. 2. We are already having trouble filling many occupations, especially in manufacturing, health care, skilled trades, and information technology. 3. Given shifting demographics, with Baby Boomers retiring and little to no labor force growth, we are looking at even a “warm body” problem for every industry. 4. This is a worldwide and nationwide trend, although we are lucky in the westcentral region of Wisconsin to have a relatively young population thanks to all our postsecondary educational institutions. 5. And even though some students might leave upon graduation, keeping

them here after graduation is easier than trying to lure them back after they have left, and that’s much easier than trying to attract someone here “cold” from elsewhere. Familiarity with our area is a big plus in terms of success rates. That fifth point was brought home by a recent event for nearly 200 UW-Eau Claire alumni under the age of 35 at a St. Paul Saints baseball game hosted by the Eau Claire Area Chamber of Commerce, UW-Eau Claire, Visit Eau Claire, and a number of local companies. The purpose: to talk about what Eau Claire is like today, to highlight job opportunities available here (more than when many of these alumni graduated, that’s for sure), and to get them thinking about coming back to Eau Claire to work. A feature article by Blugold journalism alum Steve Koepp in the July 11 issue of Time magazine about how cool and compelling Eau Claire is today might bring them back, too. Some UWEC grads don’t need an event or an article to attract them back home to their alma mater. MacKenzie (Parfitt) Seidel (a 2006 mass communications-advertising and marketing grad), and her husband, Kyle (a December 2006 management information systems grad) left UWEC upon graduation because of better job opportunities and family proximity in the Twin Cities. A decade later, with two young children in tow, Kyle now works in identity access management (IAM) for Bremer Bank and MacKenzie is toying with some entrepreneurial concepts after working in marketing for various organizations, They recently bought their dream “cowboy ranch” hobby farm just outside Eau Claire. “We came to a point in the Twin Cities with our housing development, commute, and jobs, that we felt like we were ‘living to work’ rather than ‘working to live,’ ” MacKenzie said in a phone interview. “In Eau Claire, we can have work-life balance. We can live in the country yet just be less than 10 to 15 minutes from a grocery store, hospital and clinic, and a great Eau Claire school system.” Hodek concluded his setting of the stage by sharing two charts gleaned from the Chippewa Valley Skills Gap Survey conducted in 2015. • Seventy-two percent of employers responded “yes” to the question: “Do you have difficulty filling certain positions?” • Only 38 percent of employers responded that retirement of current employees is of no concern, leaving 62 percent responding “yes” (5 percent

“urgent”; 22 percent “great”; and 35 percent “moderate”). The survey also provided a summary of hard-to-fill position openings and a summary of anticipated retirements. These charts speak for themselves. Janice Lemminger, executive vice president for Manpower, a world leader in workforce solutions, shared real-world examples of companies competing for the same talent. By taking models that already exist and applying them a little differently, there can be more winners than losers in this competition for talent. Lemminger suggested that we need to share talent pools to meet our current workforce challenges, even here in the Chippewa Valley. There is an opportunity to move from ad hoc approaches to formalized, strategic models that competitors would co-design and customize. A lot has to do with Millennials in the workforce who expect flexibility, mobility, engagement, and independence. Lemminger also remarked about how to get people with employment barriers – such as criminal records, limited English skills, lack of transportation, drug/alcohol abuse, lack of Lemminger marketable skills, or poor work histories – into the workforce. In the Chippewa Valley, the United Way has established micro-grants and is partnering with Chippewa Valley Technical College to train people with barriers in needed fields. “Candidates with barriers to employment who have been trained and vetted by a reputable workforce development agency represent no greater risk of turnover than a candidate from the general public,” she said. Lemminger noted that there are 138,000 unemployed Wisconsinites, or enough people to fill Lambeau Field one and three-quarters times. By comparison, only 68 percent of working-age people in the state participate in the labor force, meaning 32 percent of this group, or 971,000 people – enough to fill Lambeau Field a dozen times – are essentially off the labor market grid. More must be done

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to encourage these people to enter the workforce. A new program, the Wisconsin Job Honor Awards, was established last year to highlight people who have overcome challenges (such as physical or mental disabilities, criminal records, or longterm unemployment) and have nonetheless succeeded in the workforce. Deb Leslie, CEO of Workforce Resource – a nonprofit whose mission is to align the needs of the workforce with the needs of businesses for a strong, sustainable regional economy – had concrete examples of the workforce shortage already present in the Chippewa Valley. In road construction, for example, Workforce Resource helped train a number of high school students and graduates at a local road construction firm. “Some new hires last one day and do not return after a dawn-to-dusk job,” she said. “It could be they were not physically fit enough to handle the job. This training allowed for a nutritionist to teach them how to eat and hydrate correctly. In addition, the training provided physical conditioning to help them with lifting and other critical components of this demanding job. A lunch pail filled with Red Bull and a bag of Fritos would not cut it. “In addition,” she continued, “we learned some individuals do not know how to read maps. They grew up with GPS, and when you’re building a road without any specific addresses, GPS does not work. So we created a map-reading class and taught these students how to read a map.”

The health care industry is already experiencing shortages of certified nursing assistants, Leslie added. To thwart that problem in an area where the number of senior citizens is growing, her organization partnered with Grace Lutheran Foundation to train high school students in this field. When a student takes the state exam and passes, his or her high school receives $1,000 from this program that Workforce Resource engaged in with the state and federal governments. Dave Oldenberg, director of academic services for the Eau Claire Area School District, discussed how the district is fulfilling the Department of Public Instruction’s initiative in academic and career planning. “Our pre-K to grade 12 students need to be afforded awareness of local career

opportunities, exposure to those employers and opportunities to put their ‘feet on the ground’ in those fields, and then circle back and provide the educational programming that prepares these students with both the skills and abilities to succeed in both the existing and emerging employment markets,” Oldenberg said. Nearly 80 percent of students in the Eau Claire district graduate with at least one post-secondary career-related experience, whether an internship or immersion, Oldenberg added. Steve Jahn, executive director of Momentum West – an economic development nonprofit that uses partnerships and leverages resources to help the economy of west-central Wisconsin grow – relayed his organization’s Workforce Analysis of the Momentum West 10-county region

project. This project would position our economy in the most competitive and sustainable position over the next five to 10 years and Jahn beyond to develop, attract, and retain talent, Jahn said. “Three days of interviews by two teams of representatives from the Center

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for Regional Economic Competitiveness just wrapped up,” Jahn said. “This is the firm that we’ve hired to help orchestrate this project. More than 75 representatives from area businesses, industry, workforce, planning, economic development, and education, met with CREC’s teams. Discussions focused on existing efforts, current and future workforce challenges, and strategies to address these challenges. CREC will be back in the area in late July for additional conversations. Once they have gathered sufficient data, then they will be providing us with a workforce analysis of the area, analysis of existing assets and workforce attraction or retention efforts in our region, and an action plan that outlines talent attraction and retention implementation strategies and specific action items for the region.”

federal grant boosts c v tc EC-based tech college takes lead on $5 million investment in industrial mechanics program WORDS: MARK GUNDERMAN / CVTC

hippewa Valley Technical College will be taking the lead in a $5 million federal Department of Labor TechHire Partnership Grant to be shared with other technical colleges to prepare young adults for well-paying, high-growth jobs in the advanced manufacturing, information technology, and broadband industries. The $1.7 million local share to be spent over four years will be used to enhance CVTC’s Industrial Mechanic program. Announcement of the $150 million in grants to 39 recipients across the country was made June 27 by Vice President Joe Biden and Department of Labor Secretary Thomas Perez. The award to CVTC is $5 million, with that amount to be shared with Southwest Technical College in Fennimore and Wisconsin

Indianhead Technical College in Rice Lake, which partnered with CVTC on the application, along with the state Department of Workforce Development and regional employers and industry representatives. CVTC’s Industrial Mechanic program prepares students to install, maintain, operate, diagnose, and repair automated equipment used in manufacturing industries. CVTC will expand the program’s capacity and provide support services to students, with those in the 17-29 age range with barriers to training and employment being the target group. Workforce Resource Inc. will work to identify, recruit, and assess participants and provide career readiness training before students enter the CVTC program. With its share of the grant, CVTC

Chippewa Valley Technical College Industrial Mechanic instructor Tim Tewalt, center, works with students on troubleshooting automation equipment in the program lab at CVTC’s Manufacturing Education Center in 2015. A federal grant announced June 27 will enable CVTC to expand the program. also will incorporate a multi-disciplinary simulated manufacturing center for hands-on application in manufacturing programs, providing students the opportunity to practice industrial mechanics in a comprehensive production setting where real products are created. “By expanding the Industrial

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Mechanic program, CVTC advances two parts of its mission – to meet the workforce needs of the region and to improve the lives of students,” said CVTC Dean of Manufacturing Jeff Sullivan. “Many good-paying jobs are available in the field and an expanded program increases opportunities for those seeking to

C V TC BY TH E NU M B E R S

PROGRAMS AVAILABLE

CERTIFICATES AVAILABLE

94%

89%

SHARE OF CVTC GRADS EMPLOYED SIX MONTHS AFTER GRADUATE

SHARE OF THOSE CVTC GRADS WHO ARE EMPLOYED IN WISCONSIN

better their lives while at the same time filling a need in business and industry.” Students can begin classes in the Industrial Mechanic program in eightweek intervals throughout the year. Evening and daytime classes are available, with class schedules set to accommodate people who are working while going to school. Program director Tim Tewalt said scheduling will be an important consideration as the program expands. “We are thinking about when people are working,” Tewalt said. “We want to give them a lot of flexibility.” Among the employers in need of

people trained in this field are 3M, Rockwell Automation, National Presto Industries, Mayville Engineering, Cummins Filtration, OEM Fabricators, and Advanced Laser Machining. In addition to getting $1.7 million from the grant for its program work, CVTC will receive $1.3 million on behalf of the consortium for administration, support, and identification and recruitment of students. SWTC will receive $1.2 million, while WITC’s share is $735,000. Mark Gunderman is a communication specialist at Chippewa Valley Technical College in Eau Claire.

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jobs BY THE NUMB ERS

It’s easy to get snow blindness from the blizzard of employment numbers you hear on the news. Unemployment statistics are updated monthly, sometimes get adjusted when new data comes in, and they constantly fluctuate. In the past few years, fortunately, they’ve generally been fluctuating in the right direction: downward. Between May 2015 and this May – the last month for which stats are available – the share of the workforce without jobs fell in the nation, the state, and the Eau Claire metro area (which consists of Eau Claire and Chippewa counties). Meanwhile, the size of the labor force grew, too, which means that not only do a bigger share of us have jobs, but there are also more of us working in total. TOTAL LABOR FORCE (Eau Claire metro area)

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE (Eau Claire metro area)

UNEMPLOYMENT rate (Wisconsin)

UNEMPLOYMENT rate (United States):

92,177

3.4%

4.7%

May 2016

4.2%

May 2016

(preliminary, not seasonally adjusted)

May 2016

(preliminary)

(seasonally adjusted)

92,105

4.0%

4.6%

5.5%

May 2015

(not seasonally adjusted)

(seasonally adjusted)

(seasonally adjusted) Source: Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development

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E NGAGING FIVE GE NE R ATIONS IN THE 21 ST CE NTU RY WOR KPL ACE W O R D S : M i ke K re i l i ng / E X P R E S S E M P L O Y M E N T P R O F E S S I O N A L S

oday’s workforce is the first in history to include workers from five different generations. While this adds welcome diversity, it also poses some significant challenges for keeping workers engaged and on board. A recent Ernst & Young survey shows that 75 percent of managers find it challenging to manage intergenerational teams and 77 percent reported

that the different work expectations of each generation is a key challenge. Consider the general mindset of each group toward office meetings as an illustration of this challenge: T raditionalists (born prior to 1946) will typically arrive early and expect a paper agenda. Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) will expect a PowerPoint presentation and are willing to put in

any extra hours required if the meeting runs long. G eneration X (born between 1965 and 1976) employees will prefer to watch a video and expect the meeting to end by 5pm to honor work-life balance boundaries. M illennials (born between 1977 and 1997) will want the meeting to have a strong purpose, and will use collaborative digital tools to share meeting information and expect others to do the same. G eneration Z (born after 1997) employees will want to call in from a remote location, no matter what the time, because they view the workplace as an anytime-anywhere proposition.

It’s About Motivation How can employers keep all segments of this diverse workforce engaged? A Harvard Business Review article explains that it is not a matter of trying to get everyone to work in the same way, but about leveraging each group’s strengths and understanding what motivates team members the most. The author suggests that managers shouldn’t assume they already know how to motivate employees who are older or younger. Instead, it’s important to have individual conversations with workers to determine what they want out of their own professional lives. Millennial workers, in particular, typically need to feel their input has value and some have very ambitious goals. A Wall Street Journal guide to managing across generations suggests giving these individuals special assignments that are outside of their job descriptions, such as placing them on a task force that’s working to solve a busi-

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ness or workplace problem.

Different Generations, Similar Expectations While each workforce generation has come from a different era, a report by the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School Executive Development Program suggests that in the workplace, the different generations may have more in common than employers realize, from wanting the business as a whole to succeed to wanting success in their individual careers. Interestingly, workers from all five generations agree on the characteristics of an ideal business leader: • Leads by example. • Is accessible. • Challenges and holds others accountable. • Acts as a coach and mentor . • Helps others see how their roles contribute to the organization. Despite technology, communication and work style preferences, there are universal attributes that cross generations and can lead to team bonding. Whether it’s the way your employees care about their families or their vision for the team’s success, those common threads can be the beginning of a more cohesive and engaged multi-generational team. This bonding breeds an atmosphere of trust and a valuable level of respect for what each individual brings to the table, no matter what generational group they are in. Mike Kreiling is a manager with Express Employment Professionals, a staffing agency with offices worldwide, including 21 in Wisconsin.

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