| Training
good employees from the ground up
by Heather Hayes
Virginia Business
May 2005
When most company officials
think about the basic education of their work force,
they focus on training
available in high school and college. But a growing
contingent of business leaders and government officials
think that the private sector needs to start paying
attention sooner. Like maybe during nursery school. “We
now know that children develop their basic skills for
learning [before the age of 5],” says Paul Hirschbiel,
president of Eden Capital in Hampton Roads. “That
has tremendous work force and economic implications.”
The idea of getting business
involved in education before kindergarten has gained
so much traction during
the past year that it will be the theme of a weeklong
early childhood summit in Richmond in late May. Among
the activities planned are a leadership luncheon for
key business and government leaders and a strategy
session for chief executives and senior human resource
officers. Moreover, Gov. Mark R. Warner is forming
a business task force, which will study how business
can help improve early childhood education. It will
make recommendations by fall. “There has been
an incredible amount of economic research over the
past few years showing that when children get the right
kind of cognitive, social and emotional development,
they’re much more likely to have school success,
which means they’re more likely to have job and
life success,” says Hirschbiel, a scheduled speaker
at the summit.
The consequences of non-action could be disastrous,
he adds, especially in light of a recent Department
of Labor study. It projected that there will be more
jobs than qualified workers by 2011.
But early intervention can
help counter continuing shrinkage in employees’ work
skills. A study conducted by Art Rolnick, senior
vice president and
director of research business at the Federal Reserve
Bank of Minneapolis, found a 16 percent total return
on investment in early childhood education.
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