|
Community colleges train workers to company specifications
by
Donna C. Gregory
for Virginia Business
April
2005
Northrop Grumman Newport News has scoured
the country for designers like Jessica Palmer, but the
company found her right in its own shipyard.
Palmer, 21, is one of 75 ship designers
who have graduated from a co-op program developed five
years ago by Thomas Nelson Community College that helps
the major ship builder meet the growing demand for highly
skilled employees. The company has co-op arrangements
with three community colleges, Thomas Nelson, Tidewater
and Rappahannock.
Now, Thomas Nelson has added a program that takes the
co-op concept one step further. Through the creation
of an employment and training “pipeline,”
Thomas Nelson can match employers with workers who are
“skilled to specifications.” In just 18
months, the pipeline has put 1,700 people to work. Of
those, about 1,200 are now employed by Northrop Grumman,
the sole supplier of aircraft carriers for the U.S.
Navy.
The pipeline’s success recently earned national
recognition and even more important, federal funding.
Last December, the U.S. Department of Labor awarded
a $1.97 million dollar grant to Thomas Nelson to expand
the pipeline to Paul D. Camp, Tidewater and Eastern
Shore community colleges. “We will put 5,000 people
in jobs through this pipeline in three years,”
says Deborah Wright, vice president of work force development
at Thomas Nelson. “Thomas Nelson will also roll
out additional pipelines for health care, construction,
and travel and tourism, all very high-growth, high-demand
positions where there is a lack of skilled labor.”
The pipeline and custom co-op programs demonstrate how
community colleges play a critical role in work force
development, especially in the realm of manufacturing.
As companies face increased global competition, it’s
no longer enough for an employee to have a strong, healthy
back and the ability to take orders. Brainpower has
surpassed manpower as skilled employees help corporations
turn out quality products.
That’s why companies like Northrop Grumman are
partnering with community colleges to enhance their
work forces. “From a manufacturing standpoint,
the community college is without a doubt the source
for work force development,” says Brett Vassey,
president and CEO of the Virginia Manufacturers Association.
“We see the community colleges as becoming solutions
brokers.”
Serving Virginia’s Peninsula region, Thomas Nelson
has become one of those solutions brokers, helping companies
find and train employees like Palmer for hard-to-fill
positions. After graduating from the co-op program,
Palmer now works as an associate designer in the shipyard’s
outfitting overhaul department. “We go into the
compartments of the ships and we have to draw out the
layouts, and then we come back in and draw it up on
AutoCAD,” Palmer says. Shipyard employees then
use the electronic drawings to update older ships.
Because the work is so technical, requiring training
in technology, drafting and engineering, Northrop Grumman
has had difficulty finding qualified people to fill
openings for designers. “The company was going
out of state to recruit designers, paying expensive
relocation expenses and finders’ fees, and seeing
the designers leave and return home after a few years,”
Wright says.
In 1999, Northrop Grumman asked Thomas Nelson and Tidewater
to develop co-op programs that would train the next
generation of ship designers locally, eliminating costly
recruiting costs and hiring mistakes. The colleges customized
their programs to Northrop Grumman’s employee
qualifications. In return, the company offered students
paid on-the-job training at the shipyard for two semesters,
so they could hone their new skills.
The arrangement has been a win-win proposition for Northrop
Grumman and the students. The company gets a steady
supply of highly skilled designers, and the students
receive a free college degree and the guarantee of a
job once they graduate. “The co-op costs $20,000
per designer for tuition, fees, and co-op salaries,
but the company had been spending that much or more
on recruitment and relocation per designer,” Wright
says. She adds that the company often did not get designers
with the current skills it needed, forcing the company
to invest in substantial on-the-job training time. Because
of these problems, the company often suffered high turnover
and a loss of its initial investment in employees.
Tidewater Community College also has a co-op program
with the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, training students in
a wide variety of fields, including machinist, electrician,
ship fitter and metal forger. The college has 577 students
enrolled in the program.
For Thomas Nelson, developing the employment and training
pipeline was the next step in serving the Peninsula,
home to the state’s largest concentration of manufacturers.
Essentially, the pipeline educates potential employees
on the kinds of jobs available in the area and then
details the qualifications to fill them. Candidates
are even shown videos, featuring company employees,
who talk about what a job is really like. “We
make sure people know what they’re getting into
even before they fill out an application,” says
Bob Leber, Northrop Grumman’s director of education
and work force development.
Candidates are screened using an assessment tool called
WorkKeys, which tests competency in applied mathematics,
reading comprehension, learning through observation
and other critical skills Employers also use WorkKeys
to determine the skill level needed to perform certain
jobs. Each candidate’s WorkKeys’ score is
then compared to the employer’s needs, and those
that appear to be a good match are referred to the company
for job interviews. “At the end of this pipeline,
the people are so close to what the company wants that
seven in 10 are hired,” Wright says. “It’s
getting the right people with the right skills to the
right job at the right time.”
The process saves the company time, Leber says. “Before
we implemented this recruiting process, it took us 60
days on average to hire a person. We’ve gotten
that down to 40 days now. It [also] saves us money.
The people we end up hiring, we have a much higher probability
of retaining.”
Each of the 23 colleges that comprise the Virginia Community
College System (VCCS) offer some form of work force
development programming. “The colleges work with
employers who identify the education and training needs
of employees. They then develop and customize education
programs specifically for those companies,” says
Rose Johnson, vice chancellor of the VCCS’s work
force development services. “The community college
system assists a lot of companies that don’t offer
in-house training. The community college becomes their
training arm.”
A recent partnership between the Community College Workforce
Alliance and DuPont’s Zytel plant in Richmond
is an example of this customized approach. In 2003,
Zytel beat out a location in China for a $50 million
DuPont expansion, creating the need for 20 new polymer
specialists. “Twenty people was the largest hiring
group we’d ever had, and we had no way to train
[that many] people,” says Alan Gulash, Zytel’s
hiring-training coordinator. Gulash contacted the alliance
for help.
The alliance was created in July 2003 following the
merger of work force development programs at J. Sargeant
Reynolds and John Tyler community colleges. “The
business industry needed services, and it was much easier
to combine our strengths to meet their needs. We thought
we could do a better job if we united,” says Ron
Laux, the alliance’s vice president.
Using existing training manuals and a list of core skills,
the alliance developed a customized 45-day training
program that incorporated Zytel’s mechanical components
and the company’s management system. During the
program, new hires divided time between a classroom
at John Tyler and the Zytel plant where instructors
could point to specific pumps, valves and other mechanisms
as they discussed how they worked.
The trainees graduated in May and are now employed as
full-time polymer specialists. “Their plant manager
says this was absolutely the way community colleges
should work with industry,” Laux says.
The VCCS’s work force development efforts are
not just aimed at manufacturing, however. Programming
is also available in other business sectors, and for
nearly any size company.
At Germanna Community College, for example, outside
firms hire instructors to teach Spanish to employees
as the community’s Hispanic population continues
to explode. Classes are tailored specifically to certain
industries, including health care, construction, education
and automotive.
Customized leadership training is also available at
Germanna. In 2001, Rappahannock Electric Cooperative
was looking for a new way to train its management team.
Rappahannock asked Germanna’s work force development
department to create a training system tailored to the
company’s needs. “From discussions, we identified
10 training topics. Some of them included change management,
team building and customer service. Our instructors
developed the material especially for this client, in
conjunction with them. We take a lot of pride in being
able to tailor courses to their needs,” says Kathy
Habel, Germanna’s dean of work force and community
education.
“They delivered the kind of training that we needed,”
added Carolyn White, Rappahannock’s director of
human resources. “It’s convenient, and it’s
very easy to send employees there. They’re very
accommodating and flexible with their training, and
the cost is very affordable as well. If I need any kind
of training like that, they would be the first resource
I call.”
As companies face greater economic challenges and more
competition, it has become clear that American companies
have to change their strategies in order to stay profitable.
Vassey predicts community colleges will continue to
play a crucial role as companies re-engineer their work
forces in an effort to outpace their competitors. “We
can’t compete against a dollar an hour in China,”
Vassey says. “We compete on the knowledge of our
employees. If we can improve the quality of our product
or develop intellectual property that’s unique,
we can often beat foreign competition that depends upon
cheap labor. Community colleges can help build that
capacity.”
|
|
