Hartford Business Journal

12 Hartford Business Journal • July 6, 2015 www.HartfordBusiness.com P H O T O | S T E V E L A S C H E V E R CT uses patchwork approach to replace aging workforce By Gregory Seay gseay@HartfordBusiness.com A s a state in a region that are both the oldest per-capita in the nation, Connecticut would appear the most likely to feature a coordinated plan to speed the transition of its aging workforce into a younger, more technically agile one. It doesn't. Yet Connecticut's public and private sectors, keenly aware for at least the last two decades that it faced a day of reckon- ing with its graying population, are taking baby steps to try and confront and manage a dilemma that experts say will hit full flower in 2020. That's when, according to demographers and policy- makers, America's working-age population cohort born 1982 and later will begin outnumbering their Baby Boom- er parents. Jobs promoters say that while Connecticut lacks a coordinat- ed public-private sector blueprint for diversifying the age-cohort of workers, it remains ahead of the curve with a patchwork-quilt of skills development, mentoring and internship initiatives that make it attractive for young people to stay or return to Connecti- cut to work, start a business, buy a home or raise a family. Delays in responding to the issue, however, would only compound Connecticut's aging-workforce dilemma and require more time and dollars to resolve, they add. At stake is Connecticut's future economic competitive- ness. Projected to be one of the 10 oldest states for decades to come, Connecticut faces heightened pressure to compete for top talent worldwide. Inability to groom and attract work- ers in myriad industries will stunt job growth and make it harder to keep and attract employers. Recently, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Con- necticut's economy grew an anemic 0.6 percent last year, the weakest in New England, putting extra pressure on the public and private sector's worker-transition efforts. According to one estimate, says Thomas Phillips, president and CEO of Capital Workforce Partners, a Hartford nonprofit serving the region's employment needs, 80 percent of the estimated 44 million to 69 million U.S. Millennials will have a job or want one. "But the question is where will they be working?'' Phil- lips said. Training grounds Ongoing education, training and re-training — from high school through late in career life — will be the keys to replenishing Connecticut's workforce, experts say. Phillips, along with the Hartford schools chief and state Department of Economic and Community Development Com- missioner Catherine Smith, point to statistical and anecdotal evidence showing that Con- necticut's urban centers will increasingly serve as rich pools of diverse younger work- ers, many of whom will need more education and training. "This isn't a social conver- sation about impacting folks in poor communities,'' Phillips said. "It's about how do we use that [human] resource to meet the future talent-pipeline challenges that we're facing.'' Despite no cohesive blueprint for replacing an aging work- force, several public and private initiatives are underway. In early June, for example, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy announced that Connecticut earmarked $7 million over two years to imbue its aging manufacturing workforce with next- generation skills to compete in a global economy. The state Department of Economic and Community Development will finance it as part of the $30 million innovation fund targeted at boosting Connecticut's diverse manufacturing base. Other examples: • The New Haven computer science apprenticeship pro- gram A100 is expanding to Hartford this fall, aiding would- be computer programmers and engineers to find internships at participating Connecticut employers, and ultimately a full-time job after graduation. • Inside the state Department of Administrative Servic- es, senior staffers there have assembled a four-inch-thick manual that has written in it all the vital worksteps and vocabulary necessary to speedily, efficiently write, review and approve contracts for state construction projects. • The Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology in East Hartford regularly recruits high school and college stu- dents as paid interns, absorbing the latest additive and other state-of-the-art manufacturing techniques. The ultimate aim, says CCAT President/CEO Elliot Ginsburg, is a state certification protocol that allows workers educated at the state's two- and four-year colleges and training programs to work for manufacturers in this or other New England states. • A partnership between the Hartford school system and the city's corporate sec- tor, the Hartford Student Internship Program, has 500 high school juniors working this summer as interns at companies as varied as Pratt & Whitney, Aetna and UConn Health Center. The aim is, with continued corporate support, to double by 2020 those summer place- ments to provide a sustainable pipeline of employable young talent, school Superintendent Beth Schiavino-Narvaez says. • Insurer Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. has an in-house mentor-matchup between older, senior managers and younger employees in which even late Chairman and CEO Liam McGee participated. Outreach efforts Lindsey Pollak is a Norwalk native and Yale graduate who is a noted author about and workplace expert on Millennials — individuals born after 1984. As such, The Hartford has retained Pollak to help shape, as part of its "My Tomorrow" campaign, its recruiting of and marketing to that cohort of individuals, who are beginning to exert influence in everything from educa- tion and careers to recreation and politics. While there may not be a coordinated action plan to smooth Connecticut's and America's inter-generational transition, Pol- lak says the state can take some lessons from Baton Rouge, UNAMI SILVER S Connecticut's Elliot Ginsburg, CEO of the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology, says the nonprofit research lab in East Hartford is a technology testbed as well as a training ground for the next generation of technologists.

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