IWSI America

Institute for WorkPlace Skills & Innovation America

Articles

How Modern Apprenticeships Are Preparing Us For The Future of Work

Oddly enough, in the midst of record expansion, low unemployment, tightening labor markets and record profit share and stock market prices, the U.S. is facing a fundamental challenge to its economic prosperity. Employers are coming up short with the skills they need to be fully competitive, productive and meet long–term goals. Employers are having difficulty filling new jobs with qualified people who have both relevant skills and workplace experience. Many communities cannot attract or retain businesses because of a mismatch between the skills employers need and skills locals have.

The traditional approaches used to cultivate talent, in either school or on the job, are out of sync with evolving employer needs. The rapidly changing nature of work is requiring businesses to reevaluate and become more creative about their recruitment, hiring, and talent development strategies. People need to rethink their post-secondary and school-to-work options. Whether someone has a high school diploma or college degree, the school-to-work transition has become extremely challenging for many. School, alone, often does not prepare individuals for today’s workplace. It’s time to embrace a modern approach to workforce development, that can nurture a person’s calling, equip them with both the technical and interpersonal skills employers need today and prepare them for lifelong learning and success. In turn, we strengthen businesses, strengthen local and regional communities and strengthen our economy.

One Solution: Modern Apprenticeships

A new report It’s Time. Using Modern Apprenticeship to Reskill America highlights the vital role of Modern Apprenticeship. And demonstrates its role as a a work-based training program designed to prepare individuals of any age with the skills businesses need to set them on a clear pathway to employment and long-term career success.

Modern Apprenticeships are available in a broad range of 21st-century industries and occupations from cybersecurity, healthcare, and data analytics to hospitality management, green sciences, engineering and advanced manufacturing. In those fields, the level of skills ranges greatly from mid-level to high, depending on the occupation.

Small-, medium- and large-size companies are using Modern Apprenticeship to ramp up their workforce. Examples of companies now investing in Modern Apprenticeship include LinkedIn, Lockheed Martin, JPMorgan Chase, Amazon and Mailchimp.

Key components of Modern Apprenticeships include:

• customized classroom and on-the-job training at reduced or no cost,
• opportunity to earn while learning and working,
• nationally recognized industry credentials or specialized certification for registered programs,
• potential college credit leading to an associate or bachelor’s degree.

Modern Apprenticeships are flexible and can follow a variety of career trajectories, whether someone is a recent high school graduate, college graduate, military veteran or mid-career adult.

These modern programs require an initial investment of time and money, but lead to a substantial return on investment in areas such as improving companies’ overall performance;
earning while learning; increasing employee loyalty, engagement and productivity, reducing turnover; and diversifying the workplace.

Most apprentices earn while they learn, and move directly into employment upon program completion, much of the time free of student debt.

The time is now

The momentum for Modern Apprenticeships is building and the time is right for all industries and sectors to seize the opportunity to grow their business, diversity their workforce and establish a workplace with high-quality talent. State and local government should consider how policies, systems and investments can best support the development of their workforce pipeline to ensure a bright future for individuals, communities and the local economy. Hundreds of millions of dollars are available to private sector employers, local and state governments and nonprofits to initiate or ramp up Modern Apprenticeships.

Download the Report

‘A Healthcare Company Finds The Right Medicine’ – Forbes, Online

By Nicholas Wyman.

Rhode Island-based CVS Health (CVSH) is a major U.S. employer, with nearly 300,000 people on its payroll.  It is also the first American employer to have initiated a registered apprenticeship program for pharmacy technicians. Since 2005 over 8,000 individuals have signed on to that earn-while-you-learn program, making CVSH one of the most experienced U.S. sponsors of a non-traditional occupation apprenticeship. It has also launched apprenticeships for aspiring retail store managers, logistics supervisors and prescription benefits manager pharmacy technicians.    

The company’s beginning apprentices, according to David Casey, vice president, workforce strategies and chief diversity officer, CVS Health, come from a diverse swath of the population: recent high school grads, youngsters who haven’t found a way into the workforce, middle aged people seeking a career change and military veterans.

View this article on Forbes

CVS Health has doubled down on its initial commitment in November 2017 when it announced its intention to hire 5,000 new apprentices by 2022, and to expand its programs from 11 states to 18. That expansion coincides with the U.S. Department of Labor’s call to vastly increase the number of apprenticeships across industries. A growing number of companies in manufacturing, hospitality, telecommunications, IT, energy, transportation and other industries are answering the call–skilling up a new generation of employees who will help to narrow a national “skills gap” that currently stands at six million unfilled positions—the highest on record.

What’s good for the nation is, in this case, also good for participating companies. The measurable financial benefits to CVS Health, for example, have been very positive.  “Apprentice training brings our people up to full productivity more quickly,” according to Casey.  Perhaps the greatest beneficiaries of programs like CVSH’s are the apprentices themselves.  Each receives mentor-guided entry into the workforce, and earns a wage as he or she learns a skill that companies clearly value. When their term of training ends, there is no job-hunting.  They already have a job!  Nationally, more than 90% of apprentices who complete their programs stay with their employers. Many go on to additional post-secondary education, and most employers provide tuition assistance if the course of study is aligned with their business needs.

Facts And Figures

  • Ninety-eight percent of CVS Health registered apprentices are trained to become licensed and certified pharmacy technicians.  The typical training period is one year.
  • On average, CVS pharmacy stores employ five or six pharmacy technicians.
  • In retail settings, pharmacy technicians must demonstrate strong consumer service skills, keep track of inventory, and achieve 100% accuracy in filling and recording prescriptions.
  • Some 400,000 pharmacy technicians are currently working in the United States.
  • Jobs for pharmacy technicians through 2024 will increase “faster than average.”

Like other sponsors, CVS Health has discovered that attracting qualified candidates isn’t easy. “Apprenticeships in this country,” says Casey, “have a branding problem,” and lack of awareness is part of it. Few American households have any experience with apprenticeships. Others only associate apprentice work with the building trades, and with electricians, plumbers and carpenters—not with white-collar vocations such as health care, banking, information technology, and management.  The list of apprenticeships registered with the U.S. Department of Labor is broad, covering over 1,000 careers!  Nor will many parents or high school counselors recommend an apprenticeship as a pathway to a working career.  To them, a college education is the only reliable path to a good paying job and a secure future. In an era of high college dropout rates (roughly 50%) and crushing student debt, that sort of thinking is dangerously out of date. Yet, it dominates the advice given to young Americans today.

CVS Health has risen to the “branding problem” through pre-apprenticeships that it instituted in collaboration with state and local governments, public workforce agencies, community colleges, youth-focused nonprofits, and faith-based organizations.  Those partners, about 1200 nationwide, connect the company with promising recruits and often assess applicants’ reading, math, and computer know-how to assure that they have the skills needed to succeed.  The pre-apprenticeship program builds on those capabilities and helps participants to develop the soft skills that work in a consumer retail workplace requires: good communications, the ability to work with others, timeliness and a strong work ethic.  

CVS Health has used pre-apprenticeship since the program’s inception in 2005 as one of the ways to recruit diverse talent into the apprenticeship program.  Incorporating pre-apprenticeship:

  • Assists in keeping a full diverse talent pipeline
  • Improves outcomes: pre-apprentice graduates becomeproductive employees more quickly (50% more quickly by one estimate) than employees recruited by traditional methods
  • Helps the company meet its goal of hiring more people from communities served by its over 9,800 stores and 1,100 walk-in health clinics

Like leading firms in other industries, CVS Health has learned that it must take ownership of its unique training needs. “We can’t expect our school systems to equip people with the workplace habits and unique skills we require,” says Casey.  Nor can it passively put out the “Help Wanted” sign and expect people with all the right stuff to appear on its doorstep.  CVS Health’s commitment to doubling its apprentice ranks by 2022 is a clear signal that the healthcare giant has a human resource strategy for the future and that it’s on the right course.

Leave a comment or join the conversation with me on Twitter. My Book, Job U How To Find Wealth and Success By Developing the Skills Companies Actually Need can be found here

‘Fear Not The Job-Stealing Robots’- Forbes, Online

|  June 13, 2018  |  by Nicholas Wyman , Contributor  |

Let’s face it. You’re probably like most people. You’ve heard about workplace automation probably taking your job. But it won’t happen to you or maybe anyone you know, right? Much hot

Download a pdf of this article here

air is spent on the topic of workplace automation and its consequences for workers. Opinions are divided. Some people forecast we’ll take automation in our stride, as we have in the past. That displaced workers will be absorbed into new and emerging industries. Others foretell a gloomier future.

Optimists

The pro-automation bloc often point to American agriculture as an example. In the early 1900s, mechanization made U.S. farmers so productive that millions of rural dwellers moved off to cities, where labor was needed by a fast-growing industrial economy. In turn, as factories became more automated, millions of workers were laid off but found work in the emerging service economy. Machine-driven industrialization created wealth.

Over the past centuries, automation has improved conditions for most people. Today we enjoy abundant and less expensive food from fewer farmers, more cars, and refrigerators from highly efficient factories. We’ve also got a service economy that caters to almost every human want, from pet grooming to periodontal care. We have all of this, and nearly full employment to boot! Today’s wave of rapid automation may continue in the same way.

Pessimists

Those on the anti-automation bloc, however, point to a “jobless future.” They say the highly educated and tech-savvy will do exceptionally well, while robots and software will take over the work of the rest of us. An early 2018 report by Bain and Company’s Macro Trends Group estimates 20% to 25% of current jobs may be eliminated by the end of the 2020s, with middle- to low-income workers being the hardest hit. Income inequality under this scenario will worsen as more and more of today’s middle-class workers slide to the bottom.

Don’t Discount The Power Of Human Creativity

Indeed, they are two very different scenarios. Where do I stand? Put me with the pro-automation bloc any day. It recognizes the transformative power of human creativity in business, science and other walks of life.

Yes, automation will eliminate millions of today’s jobs, but what about the others? Many roles we can’t even imagine today. And innovation will create most of them.

Look At Apple, Amazon, FedEx, UPS

Life is full of surprises. Who in the late 1970s would have guessed that a handful of techno geeks in Cupertino, California would create the world’s most powerful brand and a robust job-producing engine? Today, Apple employs 124,000 people and has committed to hiring another 20,000 within five years. When its 9,000 U.S. suppliers and partners are added to the mix, Apple accounts for 2 million jobs.

Amazon is another example. Starting in 1993 with a small office and warehouse crew, founder Jeff Bezos now employs 566,000 people. The company’s second headquarters is on the drawing boards and expects to hire another 50,000 with an average salary of $100,000. And in support of Amazon and other online retailers, delivery companies such as FedEx and UPS are currently writing paychecks for almost one million people!

Growing Industries – Like Solar

Among industries, solar energy was barely a blip on the charts 15 years ago. It now accounts for 260,000 U.S. positions, mostly hands-on installation jobs, and that number is growing fast. One of every of 50 new jobs in the U.S. today is in the solar industry.

The job-creating potential of these and hundreds of other enterprises was not anticipated in the 1970s and 1980s when industrial robots first appeared in significant numbers. And other job-creating companies will undoubtedly emerge in the years ahead if the U.S. and its peer economies maintain their current dynamism.

Being Proactive

Sure, there will be growing pains, but when aren’t there? Employers, governments and individuals can take steps to ease transitions and leverage the advantages of automation to benefit workers and their communities.

Innovative, proactive programs are already putting people into rewarding, good-paying jobs. The programs focus on skilling and reskilling workers with apprenticeships, and key to them are partnerships between community colleges and local industry. The result? We’re successfully closing a gap for once-despairing employers who’ve been crying out for skilled candidates.

Automation will pave the way for more people to gain real satisfaction from their work. It’s about giving their human potential a platform to flourish. In so doing, we’re genuinely changing the world in astounding ways with robots and automation by our side.

Caption – Main Image: A humanoid robot stands on display during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Feb. 2018. Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg.

View this and other articles on Forbes:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholaswyman/2018/06/13/fear-not-the-job-stealing-robots/#6b88ad8e5f5a

New Developments in U.S. Apprenticeships: Federal, State and International Perspectives

APPAM National Research Conference  – November 2018 ,Washington D.C.

Round table with Dr  Robert Lerman, Urban Institute, employer Mr Matthew McKenney from Hypertherm, Nicholas Wyman, CEO IWSI America and special guest Mr Derrick Ramsey, Secretary of Labor, Commonwealth of Kentucky.
The 2016 election heightened an ongoing debate about how best to deal with stagnant wages and weak job options for American workers without at least a bachelor’s degree. One increasingly prominent and bipartisan option for dealing with the problem is to scale up the U.S. apprenticeship system. Policymakers are coming to recognize that expanding apprenticeship is a cost-effective strategy for raising productivity and wages, improving the transition from school to careers, upgrading skills, widening access to rewarding careers, and achieving positive returns for employers and workers. The panel will hear about how the Commonwealth of Kentucky is leading the nation with many apprenticeship program firsts. The introduction of the intermediary model through to creating apprenticeship programs in new and emerging industries.

President Trump called for expanding apprenticeship at a White House ceremony last year. His first steps toward achieving this goal were signing an executive order titled “Expanding Apprenticeship in America,” doubling the funding for apprenticeships to $200 million, and establishing a task force on apprenticeship. Meanwhile, demonstrations sponsored by the Obama administration are well under way and a bipartisan group in Congress has sponsored apprenticeship expansion legislation. Nonetheless, the United States is far behind Australia, Canada, and England in scaling apprenticeships. The apprenticeship share of the workforce of these countries is about 9-10 times the apprenticeship share of the U.S. workforce.

U.S. official (or registered) apprenticeships have long been dominated by the construction trades and have operated in a highly complex world. Recently, renewed efforts have emerged to extend apprenticeship to a wide range of other occupations, to simplify the registered apprenticeship system, and to create “industry-recognized” apprenticeships. In addition, many states are developing their own initiatives to shift skill development policies toward apprenticeship.

This round table of top state officials, apprenticeship practitioners, and national and international experts will assess the new developments in the U.S. aimed at scaling apprenticeship. They will discuss initiatives taking place at the state and local levels, barriers and opportunities for apprenticeship expansion they are experiencing, lessons from other countries and from U.S. states that have led to apprenticeship expansion, and federal and state policies that can strengthen the role of apprenticeship in the U.S. while maintaining high quality. The conversation will also examine and discuss the findings and recommendations of the President’s Task Force on Apprenticeship Expansion that were published in the summer of 2018.

“World Class Training: Australian Group Provides Training to Kentucky Registered Apprenticeship Team and Businesses” – Frankfort, KY

October 26, 2018—Frankfort, KY.

Australia’s WPC Group is providing ongoing training to the Kentucky Registered Apprenticeship team and members of the Commonwealth’s business community. The WPC Group was established in 1982 for the purposes of advancing an apprenticeship training model. Since their establishment, they have placed nearly 15,000 apprentices in stable careers throughout Australia.  WPC Group is part of the IWSI Group.

The Kentucky Registered Apprenticeship Program team members are working to establish Employer Partner Networks throughout the Commonwealth in order to expand apprenticeship availability to better meet the contemporary needs of businesses. Also known internationally as Group Training Organizations (GTOs) and intermediaries, the Employer Partner Networks work with businesses to thoroughly assess workforce needs and develop a labor force of apprentices to meet current skills gaps. The Employer Partner Network members provide comprehensive services to apprentices as well, such as career assessment and placement, locating appropriate Required Training Instruction, providing intensive mentoring, and offering wrap-around service providers to further support the needs of the apprentices.

The Kentucky Registered Apprenticeship team has established four Employer Partner Network members this year, including the Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation, Organic Grassroots, Corp., Independent Insurance Agents of Kentucky, and C-TECH, Inc. Organic Grassroots, Corp. and the Independent Insurance Agents of Kentucky joined the training class held October 25 & 26, along with Edwards Rigging, who desired to learn more about the Registered Apprenticeship Program in general.

The CEO of IWSI, Nicholas Wyman, was on hand to provide the training along with veteran apprenticeship manager, Janine McPhee. Wyman has spent the last twenty years consulting, writing, and speaking about the apprentice careers. He is the author of Job U: Find Your Path to a Successful Career in a Tough Job Market. He is also a regular contributor to Forbes magazine. McPhee is an experienced trainer with more than ten years of experience in managing large-scale apprenticeship placements for companies such as Mercedes Benz, Nissan, Esso and Exxon Mobil in Australia.

The Kentucky Registered Apprenticeship team members are Diana Jarboe, Tracy Osborne Clay, Brenda Demic and Stephen Tressler. The Program is housed under Secretary Derrick K. Ramsey at the Kentucky Education and Workforce Development Cabinet, Department of Workforce Investment, and is directed by Dr. Deborah Williamson. Dr Robert Lerman at Washington D.C. Urban Institute is providing technical expertise and support to the Apprenticeship and workforce programs.

The training was funded in part with the State Apprenticeship Expansion Continuation Grant awarded to Kentucky from the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration.

Publication for State Journal, Shelbyville Sentinel, Bullitt, Anderson and Pike County Papers and National Newsletters & Maher and Maher Publications.