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August 2014

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August 2014 | Construction Equipment Distribution | www.cedmag.com | 43 Solving the Skilled Workforce Crisis produce more well-educated talent that can support a tech- driven, 21st-century U.S. economy. They have many names – High School Inc. in Santa Ana, Calif.; the Vermilion Advantage in Danville, Ill.; the Community Education Coalition in Columbus, Ind.; the New North in north- eastern Wisconsin; New Century Careers in Pittsburgh, Pa. – and more than 1,000 other nonprofit RETAINs across the U.S. and nations throughout the world. What are the reasons RETAINs are formed? They are formed to stop businesses from closing, the tax base from shrinking, and people from leaving because the community has nothing to offer them. RETAINs frequently begin when the pain of not changing is greater than undertaking major systemic reform through collaboration. RETAINS are all about creating local systems that both re-educate those already in the workforce and better prepare a larger proportion of students for jobs and careers that will be created in the future by the ongoing jobs revolution. RETAINs succeed because individual groups form a new shared vision of a larger community arising from a variety of isolated silos (see Figure 1). Each group has its own agenda and needs. But each also has an influence on the whole community, and each depends on the success of the whole community. RETAINs are of particular interest to small business owners because they offer a viable way of pooling their resources through joint programing that will inform, attract, and prepare skilled workers. RETAINs link regional employers together as a collaborative network that integrates training organizations, educational institutions, and other community-based organizations. This reduces the individual company's investment in employer- provided education and training. RETAINs help minimize the poaching risks and promote a more positive overall regional business culture of sharing rather than stealing workers from each other. RETAINs are focused on talent creation in the broadest sense, with an important economic development subtext. They focus on the process of building an innovation network by aligning many small communities into a new education-to-employment talent creation system that eliminates redundant services and fills in the gaps with new initiatives (see Figure 2). In my work with RETAINs, I have found that their new vision comes from one or several people in the community. Who are these people? They are: Well respected by other stakeholders Well organized Possess excellent oral, written, and interpersonal communication skills Make persistence a virtue And most important, develop a team of other like-minded local people to carry on and expand the original vision through civic activism AED Member Challenge The AED Foundation has long advocated local dealer partner- ships with educational institutions offering AED-accredited programs. RETAINs can enlarge the scope of these activities by expanding the range of career and technical education programs, including those for construction equipment technology. No one business sector or individual company can rebuild a regional workforce by acting alone. U.S. business culture has traditionally treated its involvement in school- ing as a part-time charitable activity. Now, more and more local/national business leaders are beginning to see that workforce development is not a charitable endeavor, but that the very sustainability of their businesses and commu- nities are dependent upon it. RETAINs will help you focus this dialog so that all of a region's businesses can work jointly on solving the skills-job crisis for themselves and their regional economies. ED GORDON has consulted with leaders in business, education, government and non- profits for over 40 years. The culmination of his work as a visionary who applies a multi-disci- plinary approach to today's complex workforce needs and economic development issues can be found in his newest book, Future Jobs: Solving the Employ- ment & Skills Crisis. He is the founder and president of Imperial Consulting Corporation in Chicago and Palm Desert, Calif. Ed can be reached at imperialcorp@juno.com. Figure 1 Figure 2

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