Oklahoma Governor's Council for Workforce and Economic Development strategic plan.

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Oklahoma Governor’s Council for Workforce and Economic Development
Context for Council’s Work Past, Present and Future
The Opportunity and the Challenge
On October 12, 2010, readers of USA Today saw a prominently displayed article noting a “reverse Dust Bowl” trend with more people moving from California to Oklahoma than the opposite direction. The story was a glowing tribute to the growth and health of Oklahoma’s economy, and the deliberate economic development strategies that have spurred that success. The article noted that Oklahoma’s pain during the recent downturn, while serious, has been far less than that felt by most states.
That incredibly good national media coverage reflects many positive things underway in our state and communities to ensure Oklahomans – employers and workers alike – are positioned to succeed in a global economy. One essential dimension of that equation is Oklahoma’s workforce/talent development strategy, the area where the Governor’s Council for Workforce and Economic Development has been leading a broad, diverse coalition of private and public stakeholders in identifying and tackling important challenges.
Oklahoma is poised to enjoy the fruits of a growing and more diverse economy for many years to come. But realizing that opportunity will require continued and expanded focus on ensuring Oklahomans have the skills, knowledge and tools to navigate complex labor markets and to obtain and keep knowledge-based jobs – and to make Oklahoma attractive to the knowledge-based employers essential to the state’s prosperity.
Growing a knowledge-based economy takes a knowledge-based workforce.
The Council has been saying that for some time. What does it really mean? National research and promising practice efforts have produced a consensus on some “givens”:
• Every worker who seeks a living wage will need some type of post-secondary degree or credential; a high school diploma is no longer enough. According to a recent study by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, more than 60% of the jobs nationally that will come open between now and 2018 will require at least a two-year degree or certificate. 2
• Two-thirds of the workforce of 2020 is already past high school. K-12 reform strategies are important but not sufficient. Oklahomans already in the workforce will need new and different skills to succeed, and employers won’t be able to find workers that meet their needs without most of them coming from the current workforce.
• Career and labor market navigation is difficult in today’s economy. We are now in an era in which workers will often not stay with a single employer or occupation for their whole career. The paths to new jobs and careers are difficult to figure out; workers need vastly improved tools (such as Oklahoma’s www.okcareerplanner.com) to make transitions effectively and quickly.
Those givens pose some danger signs we face in Oklahoma:
• Only 30% of adults in Oklahoma have a post-secondary degree. That’s among the lowest proportions among the states. The Lumina Foundation is leading a major effort to increase post-secondary attainment across the nation. Oklahoma is participating in this effort which calls for increasing the percentage of Americans with post-secondary degrees or certifications to 60% by 2025. . Oklahoma needs to double the number of degree/certificate holders in 15 years to be competitive – a monumental undertaking.
• Oklahoma faces a severe basic skills crisis. Two dramatic indicators:
o One out of four workforce age adults in Oklahoma lack the basic skills needed to succeed in an occupational training course or a knowledge-based job. These adults face severe reading, writing, math, and analytic skill shortages that doom them to a low-income future unless they gain those skills. Today, few of those low-skill learners we serve through adult education and literacy programs achieve a post-secondary degree.
o Of those who enter a community college, a huge number --70% by some estimates -- must take remedial courses before entering academic and occupational programs. National research suggests that most students who enter remedial programs never earn a degree.
• 30% of Oklahoma high school students drop out before completion. In an era in which a high school diploma is essential – and not sufficient by itself – those who lack even that stand little chance of economic success. 3
• 44% of Oklahomans work in jobs that pay less than 70% of the state’s average annual wage. We risk having a two-tier economy, with a core of people making family-supporting wages in knowledge-economy jobs but an equal proportion earning much less and struggling to make ends meet.
These statistics reflect a dual risk that if not dealt with can have severe consequences:
• Employers won’t be able to find workers with the skills they need and that will retard their growth in Oklahoma; and
• Too many Oklahomans will be unable to compete for good jobs because their skills don’t fit what employers need.
These dual big challenges represent an essential part of economic development strategy. If we don’t achieve substantive improvement in worker skills and in ensuring companies can find workers with needed skills, Oklahoma’s economic growth will be in jeopardy.
Crafting Solutions – The Council’s Work To Date
We’ve understood this picture for several years; this imperative has framed the work of the Governor’s Council for Workforce and Economic Development and our state and local partners. The Council has played three important roles in creating scalable solutions to these enormous challenges:
• Conducting research and creating information products – The Council has commissioned research studies, framed reports and tools offering clear information about many of these topics that helped create shared understandings of the issues at play and the options for solutions.
• Convening and managing partnerships – Nearly all of our initiatives have been jointly owned with industry associations, economic developers, local workforce boards, and/or multiple state agencies. The work to date has been a collective effort of diverse partners.
• Catalyzing systemic change – The Council has continually sought out opportunities and tackled big issues at a systems level rather than plugging holes in dikes. We’ve been an active part of nationwide dialogues with other states, working closely with the National Governors Association Center for Best 4
Practices in particular, helping to identify and try out a variety of promising practices to make a scalable impact on our workforce challenges.
Our focus remains consistent on two related elements:
• Understanding the workforce needs of Oklahoma employers and ensuring education providers can meet those needs; and
• Increasing the skills of Oklahoma workers.
The Council’s work to date includes some significant accomplishments:
1. Developing Industry Sector Strategies
One of the major national workforce policy trends in recent years has been shifting the business services approach from doing customized training at the individual firm level as the dominant strategy to a new one: building partnerships within industry sectors between firms with shared workforce issues and educators who can help solve them. The Council has taken several important steps in building sector strategies in Oklahoma, including:
• Publishing the statewide Healthcare Industry Analysis Report that led to the establishment of the Oklahoma Healthcare Workforce Center, which has leveraged millions of dollars to support healthcare workforce training.
• Publishing the Aerospace Industry Workforce Report, which led to adopted legislation to recruit and retain aerospace workers, as well as funding to develop an aerospace workforce pipeline and job expansion training.
• Training and encouraging local workforce boards to use sector strategies, leading to more than 20 regional industry sector summits involving several hundred employers in workforce planning.
• Initiating MOVES (Manufacturing for Oklahoma’s Vital Economic Sustainability), which established three centers of excellence, trained more than 1,200 at-risk youth for advanced manufacturing jobs, and held academies for more than 200 Oklahoma teachers to assist students in exploring manufacturing careers.
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2. Emphasizing Attainment of Credentials
Industry-validated credentials are becoming an essential tool for defining when workers have the skills employers need for their jobs. Two Council-led initiatives have contributed to advancing this practice in Oklahoma:
• Creating the Career Readiness Certificate, which resulted in more than 40,000 Oklahomans being assessed using Work Keys to verify their skill levels against employer needs. More than 100 employer jobs in Oklahoma have been profiled using the same tool thus far.
• Certifying Work Ready Communities – the Council established a standard and verification process to show that a region has the skilled workforce needed to attract and retain business. Standards require 85% high school graduation or 82% of High School Seniors have a Career Readiness Certificate (CRC). Certification requirements also include 25% of the available workforce and 3% of the existing workforce having a CRC. So far, Work Ready Regions that have been certified plus those currently in the pipeline for review cover roughly 50% of the state.
3. Creating a Career Planning Tool
• www.okcareerplanner.com -- The Council led a career planning/career portal initiative that resulted in the creation of the okcareerplanner.com web site, which has received more than 18,000 hits during the last year from more than 4,000 Oklahomans conducting career and education planning and research.
4. Building Career Pathways
The Council established career pathways as a priority model to put emphasis on helping workers/learners understand how to move up levels in their education and careers. This model, being used widely across the country, involves linking up the efforts of adult education, TANF workforce programs, Workforce Investment Act funded efforts, and the Career Tech system, as well as others.
5. Tackling the High School Dropout Rate
The Council undertook two related strategies to focus on reducing Oklahoma’s high school dropout rate: 6
• Established a statewide Youth Council, which has become a “think tank” for youth initiatives and coordination of resources across multiple programs and organizations focusing on youth success.
• Advocated for career coaches, which led to passage of HB 1050 to establish a mentorship program to lower dropout rates, now being used by the State Board of Education and the Department of Human Services.
This substantial list of momentum points came about because of the unflagging leadership provided by Council members and a strong emphasis on collaboration among state agencies and regional partnerships develop solutions. Oklahoma has accomplished a lot; the state is frequently cited as a leader in workforce policy nationally. But the work is barely begun; Oklahoma needs sustained efforts on many of these ideas and needs to tackle some further dimensions of workforce strategy not yet in motion.
The Work Ahead
Without a highly skilled, well-educated workforce, businesses will choose to locate elsewhere and our citizens will find it harder than ever to compete in a global economy. To create high-quality jobs, and create an environment for global competition, we should focus on recommendations that are systemic, decrease government bureaucracy and increase Oklahoma’s workforce to ensure appropriately skilled and credentialed workers.
The list that follows is a combination of expansions and next steps involving work already in motion along with some important new territory in need of action.
Three themes have emerged from Governor’s Council Strategic planning and discussions that include:
• Decrease Government Bureaucracy- by designing, aligning and integrating Oklahoma’s workforce/ talent development and delivery system.
• Commitment to education and training- to ensure that employer talent demands are matched with and meet the education and training supply chain
• Increase Oklahoma’s educational attainment levels- to ensure a quality workforce with appropriate skills and credentials 7
1. Decrease Government Bureaucracy- by designing, aligning and integrating Oklahoma’s workforce/ talent development and delivery system.
• Design and implement an aligned workforce system. Currently, 9 state agencies and multiple other entities are responsible for developing Oklahoma’s workforce. And while cooperation and good will is prevalent, Oklahoma does not have a systems approach to workforce development. Clients and employers often stumble onto services and may or may not get the full services they seek and need. All too often they simply fall into the cracks between existing efforts.
The current approach is inefficient and fails to align the state’s assorted investments in workforce/talent development. With tightening budgets, the state cannot achieve the major improvements in skill level or help employers find workers who meet their needs without aligning our efforts both in terms of strategy and operations.
Other states have taken varying approaches to this issue, including:
 Naming a Chief Workforce Officer – Several Governors in recent years have appointed someone to be “in charge” of workforce strategy across the various agencies involved. Examples include Michigan, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
 Consolidating Workforce Programs into a Single Agency – This approach involves moving into one place such programs as the Workforce Investment Act, Employment Services, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, adult education, Trade Adjustment Assistance, community colleges and technical schools, and/or others. Examples of this include Florida, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
 Creating a Cabinet Council on Workforce Development – States that use cabinet structures as a means for ensuring alignment sometimes follow this approach. A current example of this approach is Colorado.
• Build an Integrated Workforce Information System and System Metrics. Oklahoma has taken small steps but needs to go much farther on a crucial idea – construction of an information system that cuts across agencies and programs. This should be done for two major reasons. First, it will allow us to set metrics and performance expectations on a system-wide basis, tackling questions like “what was the result with person A and how much did that cost when you add 8
up the efforts of multiple programs that were involved?” Second, it will allow agencies to improve their service to employers and clients if they can share and integrate data.
Several states excel at integrating their workforce information, with notable examples including Florida, Maine and Missouri. The federal government is actively promoting this idea, including making competitive grants available to states to support this work.
• Aggressively Improve Oklahoma’s On-Line Services. Using e-tools to the maximum effectiveness possible is essential if we are to achieve the scale of impact sought while also reducing the costs of services substantially. The launch of www.okcareerplanner.com is a momentum point. We now need to rethink our job-link data base, Oklahoma’s talent bank, and invent other tools that can make high quality self-service a norm for those who prefer to work on-line.
• On-line services should include enhanced job matching and employee recruiting tools, real-time labor market information and employer feedback loops, on-line education and training modules, enhanced spidering technology and enhanced program integration applications.
States that are leading the way in on-line services include Minnesota and Missouri.
2. Commitment to education and training- to ensure that employer talent demands are met with the education and training supply chain
This focus lies at the core of state workforce need and strategy. Major components of doing this include:
• Making industry sector strategies central. Sector strategies provide an efficient way to achieve maximum impact on the workforce challenges faced by industries crucial to our state. Engaging employers by sector is a strategy for obtaining employer feedback, validating skill needs, connecting talent supply and demand and supporting Oklahoma’s economic development efforts. It is also a way to engage schools with specific employer skill needs and to ensure education and training curriculum is employer based. An example of this work includes the skills panels currently being conducted with aerospace employers in 3 areas of Oklahoma thru the Oklahoma Aerospace Triangle grant.
Many states are actively using sector strategies as a major theme in their work; Oklahoma is among approximately 25 states doing some form of industry sector 9
partnerships. Strong examples include Pennsylvania, Washington, Minnesota, and Michigan.
• Expand Use of Industry-Validated Credentials. The build out of the National Career Readiness Certificate needs to continue, so that employers come to see it as a crucial way of understanding the readiness of candidates for entry jobs. A pivotal way to ensure Oklahoma workers possess the skills sought by our employers is to focus on attainment of credentials that key industries will actually use in their talent recruitment and advancement strategies. We need to work with national and state industry associations to identify and put into widespread use industry-specific credentials that are valued.
• Utilizing the CRC system as a foundational tool and as the key element in end of instruction (EOI) assessments, incorporating soft (core) skills modules, engaging K-12 as a key partner in workforce development and building a system of seamless stackable credentials, are all specific ideas related to credentials, certifications and pathways that need to be incorporated into Oklahoma’s system design. Permanent funding for the CRC system is recommended.
The industry credentials approach is gaining momentum nationally, with the National Association of Manufacturers playing a major leadership role. A number of states are focusing on this approach; a good example is Maryland.
3. Increase Oklahoma’s educational attainment levels- to ensure a quality workforce with appropriate skills and credentials
The statistics cited are challenging. Our focus must be unrelenting on increasing educational attainment at all levels – high school graduation, post-secondary degrees and certificates, and ongoing learning of newly needed skills and knowledge by Oklahomans already in the workforce.
• Increase the percentage of Oklahoma workers with a post-secondary credential. This factor is a crucial metric that is becoming increasingly important in state to state comparisons for site location decisions. We can build on work already begun through Oklahoma’s current participation in the foundation-supported national Complete College America initiative. We need strategies that not only increase the proportion of 18-22 year olds who attain a degree/certifications but also ones that focus on adults already in the workplace going back to school and obtaining new credentials. 10
Oklahoma is one of more than 30 states involved in Complete College America, which offers an excellent peer learning opportunity in defining workable strategies on this difficult issue. Michigan during the past four years undertook a dramatic effort to increase adult educational completion, providing nearly 150,000 unemployed and low-income workers up to two years of free tuition for education resulting in a two-year degree or other credential of value to employers. This initiative was funded by aligning multiple federal funding streams in support of the No Worker Left Behind strategy.
• Create and use Career Pathways approaches to increase the proportion of low-skill learners who ultimately earn a degree. Some valuable work has been done already by the Council, the CareerTech’s, and others including the South West Impact Coalition (SOIC) area to undertake this approach. We can go much farther, and construct a system of bridges that help learners who start with skill challenges to gain the occupational and academic educational success they need to gain and hold good jobs.
This model is being used extensively around the country, with many promising practices that reinvent adult learning. States to benchmark against include Kentucky, Washington, and Wisconsin.