Matchmaking: Workforce & Business Development

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On July 16th, IEDC hosted a webinar titled, “Matchmaking: Workforce & Business Development" where workforce development experts discussed the ins and outs of developing talent pipelines and strategic workforce development programs. 

Speakers of this workforce webinar were: Jason Kloth, President & CEO of Ascend Indiana; Lora Steele, Program Director at Hendricks County Economic Development Partnership; and Leigh Acevedo, Director of Business Retention & Workforce Initiatives at the Savannah Economic Development Authority. 

The webinar kicked off with Jason Kloth explaining Ascend Indiana’s mission: solving the dilemma of “employers can’t find talent and talent can’t find jobs”. Ascend bridges this gap through two business solutions: the Ascend Network and Ascend Services. 

The Ascend Network is a custom software that creates a profile of companies, departments and jobs with the skills needed to do these jobs such as character traits, technical skills and work style requirements. Started in late 2017, the network now has 400 employers, and several thousands of jobs. Ascend works with educational institutions to identify students and invite them to build profiles on their skills, traits and workstyle. Ascend has used this method to connect over 1,500 individuals to employment and internships, with a focus on those from underrepresented backgrounds. “The idea of the network is not to create another job board, but to use information from systems like dating websites to be really focused on conversion rates.” In the long run, the goal is to map the needs of employers with the pool of talent to see where the areas of misalignment are, then work with officials to make public policy choices to fill those gaps. 

On the other hand, Ascend Services is the management consulting function of Ascend that helps companies fill specific positions they have a recurring obstacle in filling. As an intermediary between businesses and higher education, Ascend helps build pipelines directly into the businesses. 

One example of this service is the talent pipeline Ascend developed with Community Health Network and the University of Indianapolis targeted at non-traditional candidates. Students in the program are part-time employees at Community who receive their bachelor of science in nursing from the University of Indianapolis paid for by Community Health. Students receive a bachelor's degree with little to no debt, the university receives a new stream of revenue that doesn’t hurt their operational budget and Community improves retention and productivity.

Next, Lora Steele with the Hendricks County Economic Development Partnership discussed their partnership with Hendricks College Network in creating the Hendricks Logistics Sector Partnership (HLSP). Using a 2 year state grant, the county partnered with education partners, employers and individuals to develop a supply chain talent pipeline. Through this program, over 300 incumbent workers were trained, 60 employer participants, 8 post secondary training partnerships formed and the turnover rate was less than 50% for companies who retained their workforce.

Steele started her presentation by discussing what she believes are the four critical questions to answer when creating a workforce development partnership program. 

1. Who leads, convenes, and supports? 
2. Is everyone on the same page with opportunities, objectives and goals?
3. Once everyone has convened together, who is leading each action? 
4. After the plan is in motion, who is maintaining the momentum? 

Hendricks County found their role as conveners in this program as they held strong relationships with higher education, chambers, foundations, k-12 institutions and workforce development boards, to name a few. They then met with each of these institutions to ask them about their concerns and where they see themselves fitting into the new program.

The next step for Hendricks County was creating the Logistics Career Pathway. After sitting down with the many educational institutions and employers in the local supply chain and asking about their current demand for various positions, HLSP created profiles of different positions and included current demand, future demand, educational level, how positions are hired, and the pay. After collecting this information, HLSP graphed this and created paths for potential workers to follow.

The relationships that were built and maintained through this workforce development program aided the county's business retention goals. “This inevitably means that if they are ever in a tight spot, and there are conversations about relocating, they will come to us, based on that trust.”

The final speaker was Leigh Acevedo from the Savannah Economic Development Authority (SEDA) who highlighted a program they launched last year: Economic Development for Educators. The program was launched by SEDA to improve the local workforce pipeline by teaching educators and students about the opportunities that are available to students after graduation and the skills needed for those jobs. 

Due to different business hours and communication tactics, it can be difficult for businesses and educational institutions to collaborate. SEDA saw this gap as a place where their edo can assist and fill the gap. In response, SEDA partnered with the local public school system, and created three full day sessions throughout the school year for educators to learn about the future opportunities by local employers. 

Sessions started with an explanation of economic development, and information on employment data trends. They then traveled to a manufacturing facility where the group learned how the company hires and how they have engaged with the schools over the years. Educators were also given the opportunity to share with the employers what they are doing in regards to preparing students for future employment. 

Due to covid-19, SEDA is preparing to deliver a lot of the messaging and content virtually as they won’t be able to have in-person tours. With this change, comes the ability to invite more people to join as they won’t be limited by how many people they can bring to a plant tour. 

After each speaker presented they took questions from the audience, timelines, relationship building, and good paying jobs were all discussed.  

The first question speakers were asked was on how long their program took to launch and the overall timeline of the project. For Ascend, after gathering community support for the idea, they raised a year’s worth of capital for three employees to start to organize the right people together to build out the strategic plan. It then took another 13 months to launch the software platform. This took a lot of capital up front, but Ascend has the potential to scale with time. 

For Hendricks County, prior to the start of their grant, they were already doing workforce development but it was mostly about posting available jobs. Moving from this to their more robust, current program took two years of strategic planning and then two years of executing with grant funding. 

For SEDA, the timeline was much quicker as it was a more micro-level approach. The program was first discussed in the early summer of 2019, and the three sessions were able to be executed during the 2019-2020 school year. This was a non-expensive, non-labor intensive program that should give them a return on investment.

The next question was regarding high turnover rates and a gap in skills despite having a great relationship with employers. Although that is the key question according to Lora Steele, she said that an employee engagement survey can help. Often, high turnover rates have to do with lack of trust, leadership and communication. Steele discussed companies working on their diversity, leadership and inclusion strategies can have direct results in lowering the turnover rate. 

The final question asked speakers about how to work with your local workforce boards. Early involvement, inviting them into the decision making process, staying in communication with them, sharing feedback and successes are all critical to working well with the local workforce board in Hendricks County. This helps both teams know what the other is doing to avoid overlap and a conflict of efforts.