The Talent Equation by Matt Ferguson

Author:Matt Ferguson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGraw Hill LLC
Published: 2014-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

WHEN EMPLOYERS EMPOWER EMPLOYMENT

The good news is that many employers are doing their part. The following examples showcase the multitude of ways companies and communities empower employment—from clearly defined certification and training programs, to examples of hiring for potential.

The story of Wegmans, the popular, privately-owned East Coast supermarket chain that employs more than 40,000 people, provides a link between extensive new-hire training and strong retention. Consistently a mainstay at the top of Fortune’s Best Places to Work list, Wegmans trains new hires for forty hours before they ever see a customer and, throughout their tenure, associates are given opportunities to hone their expertise. Hundreds of employees each year are flown around the world to learn more about the origins of their products. According to reporter David Rhode, the company has half the turnover of its competitors.11

Starbucks seeded $5 million and sponsors customer donation drives in support of Opportunity Finance Network (OFN)—a national network of community development financial organizations that provide affordable, low-risk lending to small businesses. The recession made it extremely difficult for many entrepreneurs to gain access to credit that would inevitably lead to job creation. Note that the two million-plus small businesses in the U.S. represent about 45 percent of all employment. Through fiscal year 2011, the 200 members of OFN invested $30 billion spread across approximately 83,000 businesses, primarily in urban and underserved areas. Funds also financed housing developments and community facilities.12

Combating skills shortages in information technology can be a different beast altogether. Skills evolve so fast, certification giants like Cisco are constantly updating training procedures. The company, which made its name in network administration, awards hundreds of thousands of IT certifications a year—from entry-level to expert—for its proprietary technologies. Two new programs focus on the skills gap faced in company data centers, which account for one of the fastest growing areas in IT. Moreover, the data center certifications are skills specific and not exclusive to Cisco products.13

As noted by representatives from AT&T in Chapter 2, addressing future skills needs to begin before students ever get to college. For instance, only 20,000 high-school students take the Advanced Placement test for computer science. Seeing that our economy will likely be dominated by knowledge workers or tech workers, whom we will rely on to establish the job-creating companies of the next generations, the number of young people interested in computer science and related fields is simply not high enough to inspire much confidence. The problem is not going unnoticed, however. Google has awarded nearly $9 million in college scholarships to nearly 2,100 people worldwide. Through the Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship, Google also invites dozens of female award winners to its campus each year for a retreat and seminar intended to increase the number of women in the computer science field.

Similarly, venture capitalists in New York City created the Academy for Software Engineering, a high school in the city’s Union Square neighborhood established in 2012. The school will not only address the need for more tech workers, but provide a model of how computer science education can potentially operate nationally.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.