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Workforce of TomorrowBuilding solutions for the upcoming labor shortageStory by Sean FitzgeraldLOWER BIRTH RATES, A RETIRING Baby Boomer population and a growing number of younger adults leaving northeast Wisconsin for sunnier pastures – it’s a mantra many of us have heard for years foreshadowing the possibility of a future labor shortage.
As time has crept forward, each of these dynamics have become more visible in the office and out on the shop floor. And what was once a possibility is now a certainty – there will be a shortage of skilled labor, and the effects of that shortage will drastically avail themselves in the next 10 years.
In an attempt to help paint a highly visible exclamation point on this issue, the Fond du Lac Area Association of Commerce partnered with Moraine Park Technical College in Fond du Lac earlier this year to survey nearly 8,000 employees from various companies throughout Fond du Lac County.
The results of this first ever comprehensive Fond du Lac Retirement & Departure Intentions Survey – available online at www.fdlac.com - are staggering, and beckon employers to rally together toward various solutions. Among the survey respondents, about 31 percent plan to retire within the next 10 years, while almost 49 percent plan on a retirement within the next 15 years, said Josh Bullock, vice president of strategic advancement at Moraine Park.
“That’s nearly half the workforce. The vast number of people are looking to retire in the next 15 years or so,” said Bullock, noting that federal labor statisticians consider the national average for workforce turnover to be roughly 33 percent retiring in the next 15 years.
Fond du Lac County already has a higher than average Baby Boomer population. But couple those anticipated retirements along with lower demographic trends for school-age children who will be graduating and entering the workforce during the next 15 years, and Fond du Lac County could be looking at a labor gap of nearly 17,000 unfilled jobs by 2026, according to the Association of Commerce.
That might sound like a goldmine for a highly skilled job seeker. But it’s a nightmare for small business owners and human resources departments at larger firms.
Fond du Lac isn’t standing idle, though. The survey results are the central focus of discussion at its annual Business Industry & Education Day scheduled for Oct. 8 at the University of Wisconsin-Fond du Lac campus, where community leaders will come together to have a frank conversation about what these workforce trends will specifically mean within their own organization.
At Moraine Park, Bullock said college officials have already been meeting to discuss the survey results and assess the institution’s role in strengthening the region’s workforce. One likely focus will be to get younger students into the workforce at a quicker rate. Not child labor by any means, but more seamlessly bridging the skills provided at the high school level with those taught at the college and university level, as well as bridging those skills with the existing needs of employers.
A second focus will likely be training older adults for different jobs in different careers. One of the key findings of the Fond du Lac survey – and perhaps the greatest surprise – is that nearly a quarter of respondents said they plan to go back to school to re-train for another career, some even after they’ve “retired” from their current job.
“As a college, these results told us that we need to take a look at how we’re going to prepare these people for this training,” Bullock said. “In some case, it’s become a matter of retooling, not retiring.”
While at first glance the results of the retirement intentions survey might be sobering to an employer, it’s not all doom and gloom, Bullock explained. There is a silver lining for optimistic employers.
“This can be an opportunity for employers to recognize a need to improve the skill sets of employees,” said Bullock.
Power shortage
HOW DO EMPLOYERS RECOGNIZE THESE workforce demographic trends and embrace training solutions to better prepare a crop of skilled workers for the future? The energy utility industry in northeast Wisconsin recently engaged this issue head on, and put together a plan of action to address its labor needs.
According to the state Public Service Commission’s Strategic Energy Assessment 2012 – completed in 2007 – an estimated 700 highly skilled workers are expected to retire from Wisconsin utilities by 2010, and more than 1,300 will retire by 2015. These skilled workers at energy utilities generally have been at their jobs longer than the average tenure within other industries, and on average, these employees at energy utilities are typically older than their counterparts in other industries and represent nearly half of the industry’s knowledge assets.
As these employees begin to retire, there’s potential for loss of substantial institutional knowledge if it isn’t passed along to younger employees soon, said Steve Dreger, a key account manager with the Business & Industry Services division at Fox Valley Technical College in Appleton. Dreger, himself a former 19-year employee for an investor-owned energy utility in western Wisconsin before joining FVTC, has witnessed the demographic make-up of the energy industry first hand.
“The average age in the utility industry is about ten years older than the average population, so the Baby Boomer retirement wave will be hitting the utility industry much sooner (than the rest of the workforce),” Dreger said. “The need is going to be out there, and it’s going to be nationwide.”
Starting this fall, FVTC began offering the first semester of its newly developed power plant and process plant technology programs, a joint venture with Bismarck State College in North Dakota. Each of the two separate programs will allow students to work toward an associate degree in computer control engineering technology. Half of the courses will be taken online through Bismarck State, which was designated by the U.S. Department of Energy as the National Power Plant Operations Technology and Education Center. The remaining courses are held right at FVTC, Dreger said.
Through the anxious collaboration of many of state’s investor-owned utilities, there’s a substantial job-shadowing component included in the program in which students exit the classroom and have an opportunity to work in the field with an experienced power plant operator at an electrical generation plant.
While it will take time to generate student interest and enrollment in the two new programs, Dreger and others believe the compensation will lure new talent into the field. The starting wage for a power plant technician at an investor-owned utility is between $19 to $22 an hour, Dreger reported, and experienced employees at the job can earn as much as $33 an hour.
Pay is a bit less for operations at a process plant such as a refinery, ethanol or petrochemical plant, or a natural gas processing facility, but it’s still more than most 20-year-olds can make entering the workforce after earning an associate’s degree.
Upon graduating, most students in the program should have little trouble finding employment. Dreger indicated an executive from another investor-owned utility expressed an interest in taking every graduate coming out of FVTC’s power plant technology program through 2011.
“That’s just how critical the demand is out there for some of these employers,” he said.
Collaborative skill development
A VARIETY OF MID-SIZED EMPLOYERS challenged to fill skilled positions have turned to outside resources to help evaluate skills deficiencies, then provide the training to work toward production goals.
Fond du Lac’s Brenner Tank Inc. recently completed its first “welding boot camp” with Moraine Park Technical College, an express training program geared toward bringing new employees with little to no welding experience up to a level of basic proficiency. Welding is a crucial skill set for the manufacturer of stainless steel tanks, so this intensive eight-week training program was customized to give about a dozen new employees the entry-level skills needed to begin employment.
Employees were even paid for the time they were trained during the welding boot camp.
At the ever-expanding Kraft Foods factory in Little Chute where Jack’s and other notable varieties of frozen pizza are produced and packaged, a series of additions and new equipment during the past few years has changed the work orders coming into the plant maintenance department compared with five years ago. Company management knew that some of the staff’s skills weren’t quite as proficient as needed, and that could have been a barrier to growing the company’s production, said Mary Frozena, the associate director of FVTC’s Business & Industry Services division.
“They knew they had to train their local employees in order to grow their business altogether,” Frozena said.
Management from Kraft contracted with FVTC to conduct a battery of five assessments for the company’s industrial maintenance staff to help determine where training gaps existed. After reviewing the assessment results, it was discovered the staff could use some additional training on electrical work, and again, management from Kraft turned to FVTC. Frozena said the school was able to put together an 18-hour program that would be delivered over the span of a few days and cover topics such as electrical safety and motor controls. Such training wasn’t directly available internally at Kraft.
Another grass roots partnership between FVTC and Time Warner Cable is helping to enhance the crop of skilled cable communications technicians in northeast Wisconsin. This fall semester, FVTC began offering a 13-credit telecommunications field service program which includes eight different modules centered on topics such as home wiring, home display systems, or communications signals, as examples. Upon completion from the program, students should be qualified for entry-level positions with various telecom, cable, cellular and other wiring companies. For Time Warner, it’s a chance to draw upon a labor pool that has at least a small amount of exposure to the industry, as well as some proficiency in the necessary skills, said Bill Harke, the manager of public affairs for Time Warner Cable in northeast Wisconsin.
“With this program, the student will both work with Fox Valley Tech and back here at the operations center, where they’ll go on ride outs (to customers’ homes for installation and servicing),” Harke said.
The training program expects to be a great in-the-classroom complement to Time Warner’s new Cable Town training center, a field technician laboratory within the new $20 million, 130,000-sq. ft. technical operations, customer service and administrative complex under construction on Appleton’s southeast side. Once completed this coming October, the modular Cable Town will include a variety of basement, crawlspace, attic, backyard and other environments in which a technician might experience when installing service at a customer’s home.
Cable Town is made up of a variety of materials, from wood to several types of metal and plastic, all to help simulate the kinds of experiences that Time Warner’s current roster of nearly 100 technicians face when out on a job site.
Sharpening skills internally
FOR MOST SERVICE SECTOR BUSINESSES, value for the customer is established and built upon through the employees servicing that client. Having the same familiar people answering the phone or coming to the office to provide service work or make a sales call helps strengthen the relationship between vendor and client. That’s a lesson ingrained in the minds of the staff at Modern Business Machines in Appleton, which boasts an average employee tenure five years longer than the industry average.
“There’s really nothing unique about the product line we sell – it really can be recognized as a commodity,” said Fritz Merizon, president of MBM.
Recognizing its sales, technical and support staff are the most crucial part of the relationship with customers, MBM introduced an internal service training program three years ago. Each individual department takes a few days of service training throughout the year during regular work hours, an investment in its employees Merizon said is worth both the time and expense.
“We recognize this is a virtue of our organization that we need to protect,” he said.
Unlike a number of other technical jobs, Merizon said he’s found it more effective to hire for disposition – those more-difficult-to-teach interpersonal skills that often make an employee a more agreeable fit within an organization and its customers. The technical skills, he said, are often easier to teach once the right employee is on the job.
No matter what the industry and no matter where in northeast Wisconsin, a skilled labor shortage is looming.
The data unearthed in Fond du Lac’s retirement intentions survey isn’t just unique to Fond du Lac County, though the survey put together through the Association of Commerce and Moraine Park might be a solid model to replicate. Bullock said the format of the survey, the data collections process and the summary of results are fashioned to offer similar workforce projections anywhere in northeast Wisconsin.
“We want to see this expanded,” Bullock said. “We want to see this done in other communities and other counties as well.”
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