Hartford Business Journal

www.HartfordBusiness.com • May 18, 2020 • Hartford Business Journal 9 they're bringing stuff back to Con- necticut, and they're saying, 'How do I look at my global supply chain moving forward?' We may see more companies reshoring manufacturing back to the United States, which was already happening in a slower manner. Is the Governor's Workforce Council still on schedule to complete its recommendations by October? There was a little dip in our commu- nication when everything first hit, but we've been working very diligently. We're meeting with our subcom- mittees on Zoom every week, and emailing throughout the week. We have some preliminary reports that we're finishing up right now, and … we still believe that we're on track for a full report to the gover- nor in October. Which industries is the Workforce Council focusing its efforts on? We started working on three ma- jor industries, which include manu- facturing, information technology (IT) and health care. The reason why we focused on those industries is because they seem to be changing the most, needing the most workforce devel- opment for future needs, and also have a pathway for people to enter into those careers and move up, and engage in a career instead of a job. Additionally, they offer higher- than-average wages. What has the group learned about Connecticut's workforce-develop- ment system? We spent a lot of time looking at best practices — not only in the state of Connecticut, but in other states. For example, the Eastern Con- necticut Manufacturing Pipeline Initiative (MPI) has definitely been identified as a best practice that is scalable. Right now MPI is focused on manufacturing, but we are work- ing on implementing that same program in health care. As we move forward we need to de- velop programs that align the needs of industry, education and workforce. Why has the MPI been so successful? The foundation of the program is the communication and collabora- tion between industry, education and in this case, the state's nine regional Workforce Investment Boards (WIBs). Because we're work- ing together, we're able to set up programs that meet the immediate demand of industry. When the Pipeline started in 2016 Electric Boat was written into the grant, and they committed to hiring 80% of the participants that went through the program, so the content was very heav- ily related to Electric Boat. But the program's flexibility is what also makes it highly successful. With each cohort, it became evident at a certain point which participants were going to go to Electric Boat, and which ones would have to find work elsewhere in the manufactur- ing industry (people unable to pass a security clearance, for example). So the instructors would then tweak some of the content to match more closely the industry needs of participants outside of Electric Boat. We now have our own pot of money we can use to develop these same pipeline programs that are not specific to Electric Boat. We're currently working on a five-week plastics manufacturing program that will include Middlesex and Three Rivers community colleg- es. We brought in 12 different plas- tics companies that helped come up with the program's content. Has your company hired anyone out of the MPI? Yes. Before the pipeline program, it was really difficult to hire people. We would go to a temp agency, we'd pay a 30% premium. But now that we have this program, we have a place to go to hire people that we know have had 10 weeks of training, and that will benefit our company. The introduction to manufactur- ing training program covers 80% of everything all manufacturers need employees to know. We all need people who under- stand manufacturing math, how to read blueprints, how to take mea- surements and safety. Is the MPI transferable to indus- tries outside manufacturing? Yes, absolutely. There's been work done to develop a healthcare pipeline. We're looking at skillsets like licensed practical nurses (LPN) and entry-level people in the healthcare industry. The MPI setup is also really applicable to any other industry, including IT. As we work through it, it's just about developing the in- dustry partnerships with the school systems, and getting to understand what that need is, and what the con- tent is and developing that content. The manufacturing industry ben- efits from workforce-development programs, since it gets a pool of skilled workers. What responsibility do manufacturers have in funding and providing support to these programs? I think that no matter what, in- dustry has a responsibility to work with educators to inform them of what skill sets we need in order for them to provide us with job appli- cants that fulfill our needs. It's a mutually beneficial relation- ship between all three stakehold- ers: manufacturers, schools and students. I think industry also has a responsibility to provide any sup- port that we can to the education of students such as internships, job shadowing, open houses, guest speaking, mentoring, all of those things that are vital. I think when you start looking at larger companies that are looking for really specific types of training and skill sets, there's a different level of responsibility financially. They should be contributing on some level to the expense of training those employees. I don't necessarily know what that looks like. Quality Construction + Butler Manufacturing = Repeat Customers www.borghesibuilding.com © 2011 BlueScope Buildings North America, Inc. All rights reserved. Butler Manufacturing™ is a division of BlueScope Buildings North America, Inc. 2155 East Main Street • Torrington, Connecticut 06790 Wittmann Battenfeld, Torrington, CT | 2000 | 37,000 sq. ft. • 2006 | Addition — 14,400 sq. ft. • 2013 | Addition — 18,900 sq. ft. Contact us at 860-482-7613 or visit us on the web. FOCUS: WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

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