Hartford Business Journal

www.HartfordBusiness.com • September 10, 2018 • Hartford Business Journal 15 SPECIAL SERIES BUILDING CONNECTICUT'S WORKFORCE PIPELINE existing hires a "flex'' work schedule, to the tried-and-true, like regular online job postings and cash bounties to employees who refer hirees, Pratt is pulling out all the stops in its bid to hire 25,000 new workers by 2025. Many of the new hires will replace thousands of aging Pratt hands who are headed for retirement now and in the next few years in what company officials acknowledge is perhaps its biggest peacetime staffing buildup since right after World War II. The East Hartford jet-engine builder, whose 2017 global sales topped $16 bil- lion as the largest division for Farming- ton conglomerate United Technologies Corp. (UTC), in the past 30 months al- ready has hired 15,000 salaried, skilled and semi-skilled workers — more than halfway to its target, said Tara St- Pierre, Pratt's executive director for tal- ent and a key speartip in the company's recruiting and workforce development efforts. St-Pierre says she's confident Pratt will meet its goal. "We have innovation in our blood,'' St-Pierre said. "We're always looking at more innovative ways of doing what we do, whether it's an engine or processes.'' But despite its best efforts at out-of- the-box approaches to recruiting work- ers, Pratt finds that some of its hires come through friends and family shar- ing networking job leads/opportunities. With about 40,000 employees in total, Pratt has a multi-pronged approach to integrating newcom- ers and veterans into a cohesive ball of talent. Given Pratt's economic importance as a major procurer of goods and services from other companies in and outside Connecticut, whatever staff recruiting- development path it carves, is likely to serve as a blueprint for other employers. "We're a manufacturing company in full growth mode,'' St-Pierre said, cit- ing strong demand for Pratt's geared turbofan passenger-jet engine and the F-135 turbofan that propels the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter for the U.S. and its military allies. Career opportunities Pratt's in-house team of talent searchers-developers, St-Pierre said, scour traditional talent leads, like online career and job-listing sites, and do lots of community outreach in high schools, public and private technical training schools and colleges. At any one time, she said, Pratt has some 500 college interns assigned to facilities worldwide, mostly in Connecticut. Janoye Williams, 26, joined Pratt five years ago, not through an online jobs board, but through old-fashioned networking. Williams, whose family migrated to Miami from Jamaica when he was a boy, was studying abroad in Germany while schooling at Penn State University, when a friend suggested he consider a Pratt internship. He interned for a summer in sales at Pratt in East Hartford. After gradu- ating in 2014 with his supply-chain management degree, Pratt hired and assigned him to its two-year rotation- al development program for its novice supply-chain professionals. During that time, Williams used Pratt's Employee Scholar Program tuition- reimbursement perk to enroll at UConn, obtaining his master's in financial risk management. Pratt rewarded him with a full-time job as a procurement account specialist, overseeing a half-dozen suppli- ers who account for a $26 million annual spend from Pratt, he says. His early years interning with Pratt, even leaving Miami behind to settle into Connecticut's cold climate, have all been worth it, Williams says. "Absolutely. I've taken myself out of a comfort zone. Pratt has offered me the opportunity to grow my career,'' he said. "I've had the opportunity to travel and go places I've never been before." In return, Williams has injected himself into nurturing Pratt's culture, as a mentor to younger Pratt hirees via its INROADS program. He is president of INROADS' 100-member Hartford/ Springfield alumni chapter, and is in- volved in Leadership Greater Hartford's Quest leadership-development initiative. "I saw a lot of opportunity to give back to interns," he said. positions in high demand and short supply, and that the mix shifts over time. Right now, the highest demand is for specialty nurses trained to work in the operating room, technologists, phlebotomists, pharmacists and support services staff who manage revenue and supply chain. "It's a very robust population," says Mary Morgan, vice president of talent acquisition for the system, which has six acute-care hos- pitals and a deal in the works to acquire St. Vincent's Medical Center in Bridgeport, which would represent HHC's first formal entry into Fairfield County. HHC has organized its infrastruc- ture and staffpower around filling its workforce needs as best as possible. Registered nurses, or RNs, are the largest single component of the sys- tem's workforce, and specialized RNs — whether they cater to the operating room, intensive care unit or emergency department — have become particu- larly hot commodities, Morgan said. In the past, HHC preferred to start its new RNs in the basic medical- surgical unit, caring for an array of patients who are ill or recovering from surgery. But an increase in complex procedures, in addition to advancing technology, has forced hospital admin- istrators to think of new ways to bring newly minted nursing graduates more quickly into complex, specialty areas. One recent example: HHC launched a new operating room specialty nurse program in partnership with nursing schools at UConn, Central Connecti- cut State University and Three Rivers Community College, which allows for on-site training during a nursing stu- dent's senior year. The first cohort of 10 summer nursing fellows completed the program last month. Angela Starkweather, associate dean for academic affairs at UConn's nursing school, said hospitals have increas- ingly been looking for ways to train up nurses more quickly. Such training helps nurses with their communication and coping skills. "I think it speaks highly of Hartford Hospital," Starkweather said. "It means they are invested in their new gradu- ates and want them to stay." HHC officials are mulling whether to form or scale similar programs for ICU and ER specialty nurses. "It's a significant investment of our time and resources and our clinical staff," Morgan said. "It's been very rewarding, but it takes time." She says there's a new wave of demand for nurses in Connecticut and elsewhere, the largest since the 1990s and early 2000s. Indeed, the state Department of Labor projects that Connecticut healthcare employers will need to hire about 2,100 nurses a year through 2026. At an an- nual average salary of nearly $81,000, RNs rank among the best compensated, most in-demand positions in the state. "Many of the programs in Connecti- cut get far more applicants, even ap- plicants with good grades" than they can accommodate, Morgan said. Healthcare officials say part of the reason for that is a lack of qualified nursing instructors, many of whom may be able to draw better salaries in healthcare management positions than at nursing schools. "I think that in many cases, if you do get to a leadership position, it's hard to make the move back to the educa- tion sector," Morgan said. Starkweather agrees with that assessment. She said the demand is there, but the faculty isn't. Angela Boccuzzio, 22, is a third-generation Pratt & Whitney worker hired to make engine fan blades after graduating from Meriden's H.C. Wilcox Technical High School. Continued on Page 17 >> Continued on next page >> PHOTO | CONTRIBUTED Students participating in a nurse training program at Hartford HealthCare. PHOTO | CONTRIBUTED

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